BIR not singling out any professional group – Palace

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang officials clarified that the Bureau of Internal Revenu (BIR) is not singling out any professional group and the government is just looking at the bigger picture with regard to tax collections.

Advertisements in newspapers that the BIR had put out did not single out any particular group of professionals who managed to evade paying the right taxes, Press Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said yesterday.

“All companies are treated equally and in accordance with our laws. That is the basic principle of the government. We have not been favoring and leaning towards any particular group,” Coloma explained.

Coloma was referring to the print ad showing a doctor riding on the shoulders of a teacher, which the BIR said aims to remind professionals like doctors to pay the correct taxes lest they become a burden to fixed income earners.

“We understand that the professional organizations may have differences with the BIR in the aspect of creative presentation of the advertisements, but we would like to urge them to look at the bigger picture,” Coloma said.

Complaints of medical professionals that they have been portrayed as tax cheats in the newspaper ads “are something that can be threshed out.”

“If we look at the bigger picture, the bigger picture is that we need more tax collections to be able to fund our economic development programs, and we feel that they can sit down with the BIR and the Department of Finance and thresh out their differences, so that a win-win solution may be arrived at,” Coloma pointed out.

In a news briefing, he said the tack BIR is taking is not punitive action against tax cheats, rather a policy of persuasion and a call for professionals and businessmen to help keep the local economy afloat through their civic mindedness.

“So this is a mainly persuasive, not a punitive effort,” Coloma told newsmen.

He said not all efforts are geared toward administrative methods, although programs like Run After Tax Evaders and Run After Smugglers are there.

Coloma said the BIR under the leadership of Commissioner Kim Henares “is trying to cast a wider net so that more people will join. The aim is to get more people to participate in the revenue generation effort.”

“We call on all professional organizations to urge their members to pay the right taxes and help in the country’s overall economic development efforts,” he said. 

‘Significant data’

Marissa Cabreros, the assistant commissioner for the BIR’s legal service, told the Senate committee on ways and means during a public hearing yesterday that the data they gathered on medical professionals showed that a significant number of doctors are not paying the right taxes.

Citing data from the Makati City district of the BIR in 2011, Cabreros noted that out of a total 1,178 registered doctors, 689 paid less than P35,000 in taxes.

The lowest amount of tax paid by a doctor in Makati in 2011 was a mere P10.

Cabreros presented the data after ways and means chairman Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara asked about the ad placement of the BIR and if they were singling out doctors as tax cheats.

According to Cabreros, there was no effort to single out the doctors but she admitted that she was not aware of the circumstances behind the crafting of the print ads.

Angara said that the doctors and the BIR should find ways to work together in achieving the objective of collecting the right taxes.

Claro Ortiz of the enforcement and advocacy service of the BIR noted that a total of 137 cases have been filed since Henares assumed her post.

Out of the 137 cases, Ortiz said that only two or three have reached the courts. One case was dismissed.

BIR dares PMA

The BIR has called on the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) to strictly police its ranks as it justified its latest tax campaign advertisement showing the huge disparity in income tax payments between doctors and teachers.

In a television interview, Henares said the advertisement was merely stating a fact and not meant to single out medical practitioners. – With Zinnia dela Peña, Marvin Sy