Government tax, revenue efforts improve in H1

MANILA, Philippines - The government’s tax and revenue efforts improved in the first half from year-ago levels, the Department of Finance said.

Tax effort or tax collections when measured against the country’s gross domestic product climbed to 14.09 percent as of June from 13.69 percent in the same period in 2014.

The DOF, in its latest Economic Bulletin, said the improvement was due to better tax administration.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue during the period registered a tax effort of 11.14 percent, up from 10.68 percent a year ago.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Customs saw a slight decline in its tax effort to 2.82 percent from 2.88 percent.

The DOF said the 0.4-percent increase in the government’s tax effort has been the highest increment recorded since 1997 after new tax measures were implemented.

DOF data also showed the country’s revenue effort improved to 17.13 percent in the first six months of the year from 15.51 percent in the same period last year.

“The exceptional increase in revenue collections led to the revenue effort rising from 15.5 percent last year to 17.1 percent, a 1.6-percentage point rise, the highest first semester revenue effort increment ever achieved since 1994,” the DOF said.

The revenue effort pertains to the government’s revenue collections as a percentage of the GDP.

Revenues in the first half of the year rose 16 percent to P1.086 trillion from P933.7 billion in the same period last year. Tax revenues were up 8.3 percent as the BIR raked in 9.7 percent more, offsetting the three-percent decline in the BOC’s collections.

The government aims to increase its tax effort to 15.3 percent by year end through continuous improvement in tax administration, aggressive campaigns, and expansion of the revenue base.

For next year, the Aquino administration hopes to further improve this to 16.6 percent to have more funds for public infrastructure, and economic and social projects.