New BIR director vows to tighten tax collection

CEBU, Philippines – After missing last year’s tax collection target by P.5 billion, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Region 13 has mapped out strategies to boost this year’s collection efforts under a new regional director.

BIR Revenue Region 13 set last year’s collection target at P9.9 billion but was only able to rake in P9.4 billion in actual collection.

Newly installed RR 13 regional director Rodita Galanto said, during the recent Tax Campaign Kick Off 2009 of the BIR, it is their commitment to boost tax collection and fast track the collection process in this part of the country through utilizing various schemes, employing strategies and implementing programs.

Galanto, however, pointed out that despite last year’s target deficit, the tax collected still translates to an increase from the actual collection in 2007, which only amounted P7.9 billion. Income taxes from individual taxpayers account for 34.97 percent of last year’s collection followed by 26.23 percent from corporate taxpayers’ income tax, and 20.93 percent from value added tax.         

Meanwhile for the national level, the actual collection amounted to P845 billion, which also fell short from the initial target of P965 billion. The original target was slashed down to P910 billion considering the recession.

Galanto said that as of February of this year, the region managed to collect P15 million but is still comparatively lower from last year’s P18 million collection on the same period.

“We have lined up programs to boost up our collection efforts and a lot of enforcement activities and cross checks to get returns from discrepancies to combat the possible effects of the current economic crisis,” said Galanto.

She said that Central Visayas has great advantage and opportunities to withstand economic crisis and there are still so far a lot of industries which the bureau can generate revenues from through taxation.

Galanto said that as strategies to improve their collection here in the region, they concentrate their collection efforts on the six major industries in Cebu which are considered as top grosser in terms of revenue.

These include the manufacturing sector, hotel and restaurant industry, the continuously booming real estate and leasing which includes the business process outsourcing, financial intermediation, the thriving construction sector and the wholesale and retailing sectors.

She said that currently, they still have negative collections on hotels and restaurants and financial intermediaries as well as real estate so they will likewise tap these industries.

Other strategies that the bureau has in mind to pump-prime their collection efforts include programs like the “Oplan Kandado,” which will close down an establishment that will fail to issue receipt, fail to file return, fail to register and perform under-declarations by 30 percent.

The Bureau will also do CRM-POS reading especially for wholesale and retail trading companies, as well as door to door tax mapping activities and enhance the capability of their personnel.

“We will be building bridges not walls. Our function is primarily to collect and we are aiming to fast-track our collections and provide ease to our tax payers. Our goal is to reach our targets for this year and improve the compliance of tax payers and lessen the attrition rates. Despite the crisis, we do not anticipate a decline of collection because Cebuanos are always willing to pay their taxes and help the Bureau in our pump-priming efforts,” she said. — Rhia de Pablo