<![CDATA[Tax administration gives tax officials extensive public authority in supervision, audit, assessment, collection, and tax crime investigation. This authority creates several risks of abuse when fiscal power is exercised without a clear boundary between administrative law and criminal law. This article aims to find when does maladministration by tax officials remains an administrative violation and when it becomes a criminal act. By utilizing the normative juridical research, with statutory, conceptual, and case approaches this. The findings indicate that maladministration is not an independent criminal offense. Administrative errors, procedural defects, negligence, or differences in tax interpretation should primarily be resolved through administrative correction, objection, appeal, administrative supervision, or disciplinary mechanism. However, maladministration enters the criminal law domain when the concrete conduct of tax officials fulfills the elements of a specific offense, such as bribery, extortion, gratification, document falsification, unlawful disclosure of taxpayer data, or abuse of authority causing state financial loss. This article offers operational parameters to distinguish administrative fault from criminal conduct: actus reus, mens rea, abuse of authority, unlawful benefit, coercive pressure against taxpayers, legally relevant loss, and the role of superiors or institutional tolerance. The article concludes that administrative law should operate as an initial filter against overcriminalization, but it must not become a shield for corrupt abuse of fiscal authority.]]>
