BIR optimistic on attaining next year’s collection goal

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is more optimistic on hitting next year’s collection goal as the withholding tax on online sellers is expected to go into full swing. 

BIR Commissioner Romeo Lumagui admitted that hitting the P3.05-trillion goal this year remains challenging.

But Lumagui said next year’s revenue target of at least P3.23 trillion would be more attainable given the recently imposed one percent withholding tax on online platform providers.

“It will be easier if we can really effectively get the online because we are expecting huge (collections) from that, given the significant transactions,” Lumagui said.

“While BIR’s tax efficiency has been improving, the collection is not that high because a lot has shifted from traditional purchases to online, so we are missing a lot of collections,” he said.

Next year, Lumagui said the BIR would focus its operations on the online sellers.

While the online regulation took effect last month, Lumagui said the results would not be immediate.

“We still don’t have the data on that. We don’t know yet how much exactly are the transactions worth. That’s why we cannot project how much we can get in terms of collections,” Lumagui said. 

For now, Lumagui said the P3-trillion goal is challenging, but the BIR is ramping up activities to reach the target.

As of the first half, the BIR had raked in P1.34 trillion or about 44 percent of the target.

The first semester performance also fell short by nine percent from the P1.48 trillion target to be collected from January to June.