Senator says tax amnesty bill to benefit former Marcos cronies

Senate Minority Leader Teofisto Guingona Jr. opposed yesterday the proposed tax amnesty bill, saying it would only benefit former Marcos cronies who allegedly amassed ill-gotten wealth.

"It could also hamper the already inefficient tax collection efforts of the government," Guingona said.

He contended that the proposed tax amnesty would protect tax evaders from prosecution more than it could help the government recover billions of pesos in unpaid taxes.

"It is also unfair to bonafide taxpayers who have religiously paid their dues," Guingona added.

He cited records showing that tax amnesties do not generate more revenues for the government than resolute, no-nonsense audit and tax collection "coupled with the political will to rid the system of graft and corruption."

Guingona said that the Bureau of Internal Revenue should concentrate its efforts in collecting receivables amounting to about P43 billion that have been declared by the courts as final, conclusive and collectible.

Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, chairman of the Senate committee on ways and means, has proposed an expanded tax amnesty to include both unpaid income tax and customs duties as of Dec. 31, 1998.

Enrile said past tax amnesty declarations had failed because they involved only unpaid income taxes. He said that the expansion, coupled with the use of the networth system, with minimum tax payments for either individual or corporate taxpayers, assures the government of a motherlode of revenues in the proposed tax amnesty.

Legislative efforts to declare a tax holiday during the Ramos administration failed to get off the ground because of strong opposition from the BIR. The BIR had argued that another amnesty would send the wrong signal to taxpayers and would encourage them not to pay the correct taxes.

A former House leader, however, said that there could be another reason for the strong BIR opposition.

Former Nueva Ecija Rep. Renato Diaz, then senior vice chairman of the House committee on ways and means, had said that the BIR opposed tax amnesty because this would stop them from entering into very lucrative arrangements with delinquent taxpayers.

Diaz said that in the absence of a tax amnesty, some unscrupulous BIR examiners made more money than the government in the settlement of delinquent tax cases.

He argued that a tax amnesty is a faster and less expensive way of generating revenues than court litigation.