BIR targeting Pacquiao earnings

MANILA, Philippines - The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is expected to get a share of the earnings of world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao to increase revenue collections, but Commissioner Joel Tan-Torres said any amount collected from the boxer would not be enough to enable the agency to meet its full-year target of P798.5 billion.

Tan-Torres said this is likely to be a significant amount because of other revenue-generating activities of the boxer such as “endorsements, movies and share from pay-per-view revenues.”

The BIR still has no estimate on how much tax that Pacquiao is liable to pay this year.

“We anticipate that taxes will be bigger, because from what he heard, he earned more this year,” Tan-Torres said over the weekend.

ABS-CBN reported that Pacquiao got P1.03 billion out of pay-per-view earnings from his fight last week with Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto in Las Vegas, Nevada, which the Filipino boxing sensation won by technical knockout in the 12th round.

Pacquiao’s lawyer Jeng Gacal was quoted as saying that out of the P1.03 billion figure, there would be deductions since the boxer would still pay taxes in the United States, his coach and his assistants.

Tan-Torres said that despite the higher tax from Pacquiao the BIR would still have difficulty in resolving the agency’s collection shortfall because of the difficult global environment brought about by the financial crisis and the two typhoons that battered the country in the last two months.

The BIR’s collection reached P612 billion from January to October this year, down by 5.1 percent compared to last year while the Bureau of Customs collected P183.9 billion, a decline of 15.7 percent during the same period last year.

Weak revenues brought the government’s budget deficit to P266.1 billion during the past 10 months, which already breached the P250-billion full-year budget deficit ceiling.

The P266.1 billion is 326.9 percent more than the P62.3 billion posted in the same period last year.