BIR to pursue audit of big property developers

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) will continue its tax audits of property giants to investigate reports that they failed to remit certain taxes owed to the government.

Finance Assistant Secretary Dakila Napao said yesterday the BIR, upon the directive of Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez, would pursue its tax review of real estate developers.

Napao said Dominguez has returned the authority to conduct the tax examinations to regular teams like the BIR’s Large Taxpayers Service (LTS) to avoid confusion on mandates and redundancy in roles.

Upon the instructions of Dominguez, the BIR last week suspended the revenue special orders (RSOs) and operations memoranda (OMs) creating special audit groups for property giants and multi-level marketing.

The agency also called off OMs setting up audit groups for Philippine offshore gaming operators and e-sabong.

Dominguez said the functions given to the special audit task force groups fall in conflict with the duties of BIR offices, such as the LTS. Either way, the audit efforts started by the suspended special audit teams will be picked up by the regular divisions.

“Based on the letter of instructions of the secretary, it appears that the conduct of audit through the various RSOs have created confusion as shown in this issue,” Napao said.

“The guidance and the policy direction would be to stop all the audit related to these RSOs and that the main teams in the BIR that have jurisdictions over these taxpayers will continue to look into these issues,” he said.