BAGUIO CITY — The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR)-Cordillera hopes to collect its PHP7-billion target for 2018 by simply making the residents and establishments in the region aware of their tax responsibilities, such as paying the right amount of taxes and issuing receipts for sold goods and services.
BIR Acting Regional Director Douglas Rufino on Wednesday said the goal is 5 percent or PHP217 million higher than the previous year’s goal.
More than half or 58 percent of the region’s tax take target is born by Revenue District Office 8 (RDO-8) covering Baguio City, which aims to collect PHP3.9 billion, according to RDO chief, lawyer Wrenolph Panganiban.
Rufino noted that the so-called City of Pines or Philippines’ Summer Capital is host to most of the upland region’s enterprises and industries aside from the major educational institutions.
Among the tax collection strategies now being done by the revenue office is continuously inspecting and assessing establishments to ensure these are issuing receipts, on which the value-added tax is based.
Lawyer Jesusa Rebudal of the legal office said establishments must issue receipts under the law, or else face being put in jail for two to four years and paying a fine ranging from PHP500,000 to PHP10 million.
Rufino added BIR-Cordillera is also in the process of looking into the Income Tax Returns (ITRs) of the companies in the region, as a number of them were found to have filed their ITRs but failed to pay the right taxes.
He said delinquent accounts dating way back 10 years ago have now reached about PHP200 million and the region could meet its goal if only these are collected.
He added the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Act, which took effect at the start of 2018, is also expected to result in foregone tax collection of about PHP1.2 billion for the region, since the new law exempts those with an annual salary of PHP250,000 and below from paying personal income taxes.
The TRAIN law is one of the Duterte administration’s cornerstone reforms to alleviate poverty in the country.
He added tax mapping is also a constant activity of BIR-Cordillera, especially in Baguio, to identify establishments that are unregistered, untaxed, and are not paying their taxes.
It was learned that in 2007, RDO-8 failed to meet its target collection goal by two percent or over PHP100 million.
Rufino added the BIR in Cordillera has also launched its “Salamat Sa’yo” tag, which recognizes the fact that the country’s lifeblood is provided by the taxpayers.
He said the “Salamat Sa’yo” logo is aimed at thanking not just the big taxpayers, but even the small ones, who conscientiously pay taxes.
Rufino said seminars and information dissemination activities, including briefs on the TRAIN law, are in the pipeline to boost the region’s tax collection.
Among these are seminars for the small-scale miners, especially in the province of Abra. It was observed that in the past five years, there was a noticeable decrease in tax collection from the mining sector.
The BIR-Cordillera and the National Bureau of Investigation in the region had agreed to jointly go after small-scale miners to mandate them to pay their excise tax and to sell their gold to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
The government has lowered the excise tax on minerals to one percent from the old rate of five percent to entice the miners to sell to the government instead of the “black market”, which does not give the government its mandatory share of excise taxes from mineral deposits. **PNA
