Parayno stays as BIR chief

President Arroyo strongly indicated yesterday that she would prevail upon Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Guillermo Parayno to stay in his post following his reported offer to resign.

Interviewed over the Iglesia ni Cristo-run Net 25 television station yesterday, Mrs. Arroyo expressed her desire to keep Parayno in his post to implement her administration’s tax reform measures, including her commitment to conduct an intensified campaign against tax evaders.

"My BIR commissioner is very good, Willie Parayno. When he was in Customs, he was able to prove this when he caught a lot of smugglers. So we rely much on him for this thing (tax evasion campaign)," Mrs. Arroyo said.

But she didn’t mention anything about the resignation similarly offered by Customs Commissioner Antonio Bernardo.

Both Parayno and Bernardo reportedly submitted to Mrs. Arroyo their respective resignations to take effect when she finds replacements.

Mrs. Arroyo credited Parayno for his successful innovations in the bureau, particularly the computerization of auditing of payments of value added tax (VAT) that plugged tax leakages in the past.

The President also cited Parayno for stopping a tax scam in 2002 when he discovered that VAT payments deposited at the Land Bank of the Philippines went to the pockets of a corrupt BIR collector in connivance with some bank officials.

"If you remember the tax scam in the past when payments were transferred to a private account, we caught them because of the auditing of receipts of the ins and outs (of VAT payments)," Mrs. Arroyo said, referring to the controversial case of whistleblower Acsa Ramirez, an employee of the Landbank-Laguna branch, who was erroneously tagged by Mrs. Arroyo as one of the suspects during a media presentation.

In a press briefing at the Palace yesterday, Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye said he received text messages that Parayno and Bernardo have denied reports that they had tendered their resignations the other day.

Bunye was clueless on the reported resignations of Parayno and Bernardo even as the news hogged the headlines yesterday.

He disclosed, however, that he would be making announcements of certain changes in some government agencies on Friday.

But Mrs. Arroyo has said that she would only announce her new Cabinet and other appointees after the 25-man Commission on Appointments (CA) shall have been officially constituted.

"Once the CA is completed, that would be the time I would announce as to who are in (or out) of my Cabinet. I have no announcements for now," the President said.