2 BIR men face raps for not remitting collected tax

MANILA, Philippines - The Office of the Ombudsman has ordered the indicted of two officers of the Bureau of  Internal Revenue (BIR) before the Agusan del Sur court for failure to account and remit tax collections.

The Ombudsman said revenue officers Jocelyn Casido of BIR-Rosario, Agusan del Sur and Ronelito Caday of BIR-Lapaz, Agusan del Sur are facing charges of malversation of public funds.

The criminal charges stemmed from the complaints filed by the Commission on Audit (COA) after examining the tax collections and bank remittances of Caday and Casido.

The COA found that Casido had a shortage of P7.253 million for the period covering Feb. 1, 2005 to Nov. 30, 2008, while Caday had a shortage of over P539,000 for the period Mar. 1, 2007 to Dec. 31, 2008.

Upon COA’s demand, Casido was able to remit from June 30, 2009 to Sept. 30, 2010 the total amount of P128,891 only, leaving a cash shortage of P7.124 million while Caday was able to restitute P107,000 only, reducing his shortage to P432,042.

The two did not provide direct explanations on why the missing tax collections were not remitted.

In approving the resolution, Deputy Ombudsman for Mindanao Rodolfo Elman ruled that, “in failing to explain the missing funds, the respondents as accountable officers failed to overcome the presumption that these public funds were put to their personal use.”