Internal Revenue Commissioner Guillermo Parayno Jr. led the "saturation drive" yesterday along with revenue district officers and about 350 fieldmen who went door-to-door to determine the extent of tax cheating among business operators in the said areas.
According to Parayno, the BIR was preparing stiff penalties for violations of the revenue regulations particularly on BIR permits and registrations, issuance of official receipts and sales invoices and the registration of cash machines.
Parayno said the BIR would impose the full measure of its penalties that he said would amount to at least P10,000 to as much as P200,000.
"That’s only for violating our rules, we haven’t even begun estimating the back-taxes that these business establishments also have to pay once we sort out their violations and how far back they have been doing this," Parayno said. "It is such a simple thing, it looks small when you look at it singly but when summed up, this will have a big impact on our tax collections."
In yesterday’s raid, the big-name violators were a major gas station, a building material supply chain and a well-known restaurant chain.
The gas station was caught not issuing official receipts while the restaurant was using unregistered cash machines.
"I think people have become very complacent," Parayno said. "They don’t take the BIR seriously and this is what we want to correct. We want to wake up these people."
Parayno warned that following the BIR raid, the commission intended to pursue the cases until the violators were properly penalized to ensure their future compliance. – Des Ferriols