BIR hopes to meet July collection goal of P97.6B

MANILA, Philippines - The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is hopeful it would meet its collection goal of P97.6 billion this month with the expected additional payments to be received from individuals who opted to pay their taxes on installment basis.

The July collection target is 18.86 percent higher than last year’s P83.52 billion.

The BIR said there would be no extension of the deadline and that the corresponding penalties as provided for in the tax code will be imposed on late payments.

The government’s main tax collection agency is eyeing to raise P306.87 billion from tax collections in the third quarter and P321.43 billion in the fourth quarter.

For 2013, the BIR is looking to collect a record P1.25 trillion, 18 percent higher than the actual collections of P1.057 trillion a year earlier.  

The BIR accounts for more than half of the government’s revenue collection.  It has intensified its crackdown on tax evading self-employed professionals in line with its goal to boost tax collections.

To achieve its collection goal, the BIR intends to continue to pursue vigorously the Run After Tax Evaders (RATE) and Oplan Kandado program.

RATE seeks to identify the prosecute high-profile tax evaders through investigation of large-scale vilators of the National Internal Revenue Code.

Oplan Kandado, on the other hand, is an initiative involving the strengthening of the BIR’s imposition of prescribed administrative sanctions for non-compliance of requirements such as taxpayer’s VAT registration, the issuance of sales invoices/receipts, filing of VAT returns, declaration of taxable transactions and payment of the correct amount of taxes.

The BIR is putting in place an automated facility on excise products that will allow excise taxpayers to electronically submit the official registry books for monitoring and reconciliation purposes to mainly uncover discrepancies on declarations that will increase revenue collection.