Government eyes tax payments of licensed professionals

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Finance and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) are drawing up a list of all licensed professionals to find out who among them are paying the right taxes.

“We’re going to send letters to those who do not come out in our database and ask them why they’re not registered,” Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said over the weekend.

He also urged the secretaries and staff of doctors, lawyers and other professionals to make sure that their employers are issuing receipts and paying the right taxes.

The Finance chief said clients of these professionals – doctors, lawyers, accountants and many others – should always ask for receipts to help ensure that the right taxes are paid for the services rendered to them.

“With the receipt, we have a Premyo sa Resibo campaign where people text their number and they’re entitled to a raffle ticket. Every month, there’s a P1 million prize,” Purisima said.

He said self-employed individuals could only show proof of their incomes when they have issued receipts.

The Aquino administration is stepping up efforts to boost collections amid problematic revenues and a widening budget gap.

President Aquino has vowed not to slap new taxes and repeatedly promised that additional revenues would be raised through enhanced tax administration instead of new taxes.

Government hopes to bring the tax effort to 15 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in a year, an improvement from the previous target to bring this to 13 percent of GDP.

The tax effort measures the government’s ability to increase tax collection that is commensurate with the growth of the economy.

In the first quarter of the year, the government’s tax effort improved to 12.3 percent of GDP from the 11.6 percent of GDP recorded in the same period in 2009.

In 2009, the government’s tax effort slid to 12.8 percent or way below the programmed 14.4 percent for the period due to a host of reasons including rampant corruption, a weakened economy and the implementation of the so-called revenue-eroding measures.

This year, the January to July fiscal deficit of the National Government reached P229.4 billion, just P96 billion away from the full-year target of P325 billion or 3.9 percent of GDP.

In July, the budget gap hit P32.7 billion, narrower than the P34.6 billion recorded in the same month last year.