BIR tightens noose on unscrupulous taxpayers

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has issued a new revenue regulation that aims to crack down on unscrupulous taxpayers who do not have legitimate businesses but register with BIR as taxpayers.

BIR officer-in-charge Lilian Hefti said there is a growing number of “fly-by-night” taxpayers who do not have any legitimate businesses but have managed to register with BIR as taxpayers and have secured from the agency registered sales invoices and official receipts.

These taxpayers intentionally do not file the tax returns required of them by BIR but have conveniently utilized their BIR sales invoices and official receipts for fictitious and anomalous transactions in exchange for a price or a fee.

In her effort to plug this loophole, Hefti issued a new regulation that would prescribe additional procedures to detect their presence in the BIR’s current database. This would prevent them from securing an Authority to Print (ATP) their sales invoices and official receipts unless certain requirements are complied with.

According to the new order, all new registrants shall be subjected to ocular inspection as part of a monthly tax mapping routine operation, after having complied with the basic registration requirements and after securing a Taxpayer’s Identification Number (TIN).

Taxpayers shall be strictly monitored in terms of their compliance with the filing of returns, payments of taxes and their subsequent request to print sales and official receipts.

Additional requirements shall also be required from all taxpayers applying to print sales invoices and official receipts such as the photocopy of latest annual income tax return and photocopy of value-added tax (VAT) returns filed within a 12-month period.

The BIR also warned businessmen against utilizing the sales invoices and official receipts of these “fly-by-night” taxpayers by using them for claiming input tax or input VAT.

The BIR, under heavy pressure from Malacañang to perform better, has been looking for ways to make up for its weak performance in the first half of the year. 

The BIR incurred a shortfall of P38.6 billion in the first semester but it is sticking to its revenue target of P730 billion. The government incurred a budget deficit of P41 billion in the first half of the year or P9.7 billion higher than the programmed deficit ceiling of P31 billion.