BIR RR 13: Another banner year

Today, the word “scam” is the country’s most overused jargon in the dictionary.  With an equally popular but blood-pressure-raising phrase “pork barrel” preceding, the nation is boiling.   However, amid the hoopla brought about by the “pork barrel” scam as chronicled by Benhur Luy, the whistleblower, and played to the hilt by Janet Lim Napoles through her strong assertion of non-involvement, climaxed by her mysterious disappearance, and capped by her mind-boggling surrender to no less than President Noynoy Aquino, then, followed on by the return of Ruby Tuason from self-exile to turn state witness, it is so surprising that no one hasn’t even dared delving into how the honest taxpayers have felt about the callousness of the people involved in these shenanigans. 

Indeed, the term “pork barrel” wasn’t only used for patronage politics. It was also used as a vehicle by politicians in tandem with some similarly crooked individuals to pocket government funds contributed by the honest taxpaying public for their own private use.  The apparent and successful collaboration (such as those done by the lawmakers and Janet L. Napoles owned foundations) that has made the nation several billions poorer is a testament to such abuse. 

Consequently, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) had to annually contend with perpetually increasing goals or targets.  Perpetually increasing goals that are partly influenced by wicked politicians, who, in one way or another, needed some help from the BIR and some honest taxpayers to finance, on a subtle note, their whims and caprices, or at nastiest greed, their fleets of expensive cars and palatial mansions.  

However, despite these revolting developments, the taxpayers, in partnership with the BIR, have continued to work in tandem to reach these goals.  Inasmuch as a good performance is more often used as basis for the succeeding year’s goals, despite their extraordinary efforts, they (BIR) will surely have little successes in hitting its annual collection goals.  For instance, in 2012, the BIR, in a landmark performance, was able to hit, for the first time, over a trillion pesos (P1.016 trillion) in collection.  Truly unprecedented, such performance was likely considered in setting up 2013 targets.  Thus, as has been the norm, 2013’s goal was again raised.  The Department of Finance (DOF) has assigned the BIR a revenue goal of P1.253 trillion, higher by P187.561 billion or 17.59 percent than the 2012 goal of P1.066 trillion.  Such target was also higher than the original 2013 goal of P1.238 trillion but below the previous estimate of P1.272 trillion.

Such goal though included both general operations and non-operations.  The general operations are regular tax revenues while the non-operations come from taxes imposed on government securities sold by the Bureau of Treasury.  On the general operations, by tax type, the BIR had a goal to collect P759.187 billion from net income and profits; P102.367 billion from excise taxes; P268.631 billion from value-added taxes (VAT); P60.732 billion from percentage taxes and P62.762 billion from other taxes.  Of these targets, the BIR’s Large Taxpayers Group was tasked to collect the bulk of the target or P768.308 billion, and the rest was spread out among revenue regions and districts across the country. 

To this, BIR Revenue Region 13 (comprising four districts in the Province of Cebu and one district in the Province of Bohol) did what it was supposed to do in 2013.  Always known to meet challenges head on, the region surpassed its 2012 collection (P14,958,855,412.28) by a whooping P2,327,069,984.43 in turning in P17,285,925,396.71 this year. Truth to tell, such collection is 15.56% higher than last year (2012). 

Considering that the region was hit by a nerve-wracking tremor and an ultra-devastating super-typhoon Yolanda, Revenue Region 13’s performance was a great feat. Again, notably, this second-straight-year’s remarkable performances are happening under the stewardship of government executive “par excellence” BIR (RR13) Regional Director Hermeno A. Palamine.  And to this, we say, unequivocally, kudos to the men and women of BIR Revenue Region 13 for another banner year.

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