Philippine Tax Academy to offer post-graduate courses online

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Tax Academy (PTA) will offer starting next year an off-campus specialized study program on public finance, as well as other online courses to provide continuing training to tax and revenue personnel all over the country, according to the Department of Finance (DOF).

According to Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran, the post-graduate course would be open to all personnel of the DOF, Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Bureau of Customs (BOC), and the Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF).

PTA will offer this study program in partnership with the Graduate School of the University of the Philippines- Los Baños (UPLB) in Laguna, he said.

To make courses more accessible to employees, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez also instructed PTA to film the lectures and upload these online.

“At some point, we may have a film studio. I want to use not only person-to-person discussions, but also online courses,” Dominguez said.

Beltran said the setup would be cheaper than organizing offline courses that require presence of employees, and would make PTA courses more easily accessible to all personnel of the DOF and its attached agencies nationwide.

Dominguez also directed Beltran to ensure that PTA would be staffed with a “digitally enabled” workforce that would enable it to offer online courses when the academy gets its budget next year.

“I want a small staff, I want them to be digitally enabled,” Dominguez said.

Earlier, Beltran said the PTA has submitted to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) a three-year strategic information plan, which includes the establishment of an information system for the academy to facilitate knowledge sharing.

He said the academy is also planning to offer free post-graduate programs to qualified employees of the DOF and its attached agencies.

The undersecretary had also mentioned plans for DOF senior officials to join the PTA’s teaching team as adjunct professors.

He said the PTA would also conduct pre-requisite courses on journal writing skills and other minor courses.