Binay says Ibay’s claim fictitious, politically motivated

Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay yesterday accused former councilor Oscar Ibay of coming up with "fictitious allegations" that eight of every 10 employees of the city government do not have a taxpayer’s identification number (TIN) thus making them ghost employees.

He dubbed the same another malicious and politically motivated attack by a man who ran against him but lost in the May 2004 elections.

Binay said Ibay went out of bounds in claiming that 80 percent of city hall’s workers do not have TIN and this makes him liable for a supposed crime.

"Where is the logic in that statement? Just because you have no TIN, you are a ghost employee? That’s just like saying if you do not have a cedula, you are not a Filipino," he said.

Binay added that if Ibay’s claim is true, then the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) should have been the first to raise the issue on non-payment of taxes.

"The issue of TIN is between the taxpayer and the BIR. Even assuming that the claim is true, and that is a big if," "what is my offense?" he asked.

Ibay, on Tuesday, bared voluminous documents which allegedly confirm the existence of ghost employees at the Makati City Hall.

He said he was bale to secure records from the BIR showing how the city government, since 1999, had been maintaining employees with no TIN.

Ibay argued that having no TIN means one may not be paying the proper taxes and is being illegally compensated.

He further noted that the mayor is liable because of command responsibility since he signs renewal contracts especially for casual employees after the same are sent to him by department heads.

Ibay believes that the documents he was able to get his hands on during the three-day suspension of Binay pins the latter down.

Binay, however, explained that the city government cannot even be accused of failing to remit withholding taxes because it remits taxes regularly to the national government.

He stressed that in 2005, Makati remitted P73,427,251.59 in withholding taxes to the national government and these records are available at the city’s Accounting Department.

"As usual, Mr. Ibay, just like Roberto Brillante, again raised fictitious allegations. The allegations are no different from other allegations they made before, during and after elections. And these are elections where they lost heavily," he said referring to former vice mayor Roberto Brillante.