BIR to audit airlines, shipping firms

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) will conduct a massive tax audit on airlines and shipping companies next year as part of its comprehensive assessment program.

Internal Revenue Commissioner Dakila Fonacier said this audit is part of the effort of the bureau to raise an assessment target of P20 billion every year.

He said they have created more than 10 special task forces for the specific purpose of auditing selected industries.

According to Fonacier, they are currently tracing possible loopholes in the government’s tax policy.

"We are now gathering data to support our assessment. We will try to locate possible areas of tax fraud," he said.

The BIR chief said they would also look into the books of big telephone companies with regard to alleged non-issuance of receipts for pre-paid phone cards.

"We are going to look into this allegation (that big telephone firms) do not issue receipts for their respective phone cards," he said.

He said the investigation on the alleged non-issuance of receipts of these telecom firms started in November. "This is a complicated case, we need to verify these allegations," he said.

Fonacier clarified that this massive audit is not actually aimed at raising revenues but to serve as deterrent to "would be" tax cheats.

"It is one of the effective ways to curb tax evasion," he said, adding that the audit they are conducting right now is more in-depth than the normal auditing they were doing before.

Fonacier said the bureau might not be able to met its targeted P20-billion revenues from assessment program this year since they have suspended investigation of taxpayers to give way to his transition as BIR head.

A former Board of Investments executive, Fonacier, joined, BIR in January this year replacing the late Beethoven Rualo.