The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) expects to collect only P895.131 billion in 2009, P73.2 billion lower than the P968.3 billion target.
The tax agency took into account the decrease in corporate income tax rate in 2009 to only 30 percent as mandated by law. This is expected to translate to P17.477 billion in revenue losses, according to estimates by the BIR’s Large Taxpayer Service group and Revenue Regions unit.
The expanded value added tax law has increased the minimum corporate income tax to 35 percent from 32 percent. However, this would be reduced to 30 percent starting next year. The law also raised the sales tax to 12 percent from 10 percent and lifted exemptions on oil and petroleum products.
For the BIR’s revenue outlook for 2009, the agency expects to collect P895.131 billion from regular individual and corporate taxpayers, P19.366 billion from tax audit and P10 billion from one-time transactions or non-recurring tax income such as from the sale of huge real estate properties and initial public offerings.
In August, the BIR collected P78.9 billion, or 0.8 percent lower than the P79.6 billion recorded in the same period last year.
BIR Deputy Commissioner Nelson Aspe said the agency is keeping its fingers crossed that the third and fourth quarter collections would be able to make up for lower collections in the early part of the year.
Despite the lower-than-expected collections of the BIR, the National Government reported a budget surplus of P1.7 billion in August. The figure was narrower than the P13.9 billion surplus recorded in the same period last year.
The August surplus was also not enough to wipe out the deficit in the first eight months of the year amounting to P31.7 billion, data from the DOF showed.