Tax revenues rise to P2.77 trillion in 9 months

MANILA, Philippines — The government has collected P2.77 trillion in tax revenues as of end-September, hitting a little over 70 percent of its full-year goal as it ramps up digitalization and plugging of leakages.

Preliminary data released by the Department of Finance showed that tax collections from January to September reached P2.77 trillion.

This is nine percent higher than the P2.54 trillion revenues in the same period last year.

This is also equivalent to 72.5 percent of the 2024 tax revenue goal of P3.82 trillion.

Tax revenues are expected to account for 89 percent of overall revenue collections for the year at P4.269 trillion. The remainder would be sourced from non-tax revenues and privatization proceeds.

For September alone, tax revenues reached P212 billion, 9.2 percent lower than the P233.53 billion in collections last year.

Broken down, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) raked in P161 billion, up by 5.8 percent from the P152.17 billion in the comparative period.

However, this was 12.7 percent below the goal of P184.46 billion for the month of September.

For the Bureau of Customs (BOC), revenues hit P76.45 billion, a three percent decline from P78.9 billion in September 2023.

From January to September, the BIR saw its collections rise by 12 percent to P2.08 trillion while the BOC’s haul inched up by 4.6 percent to P690.84 billion.

Finance Secretary Ralph Recto recently convened the BIR and BOC to assess the agencies’ collection performances and discuss plans to meet their targets for this year and for 2025.

The finance chief expects the government to further increase its collections on the back of accelerated economic growth.

Recto is also banking on the recent policy easing of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to boost revenue collections.