BAGUIO CITY – Commissioner Cesar R. Dulay of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) commended the regional office of the bureau for its improved tax collections over the past several years despite being undermanned.
Commissioner Dulay admitted the whole bureau is actually undermanned but tasked to do a huge job in collecting the taxes due to the government from the registered individual and corporate taxpayers nationwide.
He added the BIR has a plantilla of over 21,000 workers but it only has over 10,000 workforce all over the country, roughly above 50 percent of its personnel compliment with a gigantic role of making sure that its target collections for each year will be realized.
In the Cordillera, he admitted the regional office only operates with a 37 percent personnel compliment with only 131 officials and employees compared to its supposed plantilla of 680 workers tasked to collect some P6.64 billion in taxes region-wide for this year.
The BIR-CAR was able to collect more than P4.8 billion in taxes in 2015 before increasing its collections to P5.72 billion last year.
Baguio City, the region’s trade, commerce and education center, accounted for at least 57 percent of the overall tax collections of the agency over the past several years.
At the national level, Dulay claimed the bureau was given a tax collection target of P1.829 trillion this year which is 16 percent higher than the agency’s tax collection of P1.572 trillion last year.
He pointed out, because of the huge tax collection burden on their shoulders, the bureau has embarked on a massive hiring of qualified lawyers and accountants in the different regional offices to help them intensify collection efforts to generate more resources due to the government.
Dulay emphasized regional directors are now empowered to hire qualified personnel to fill up the vacant positions in their respective plantilla to boost the bureau’s tax collection efforts in the different parts of the country for this year.
BIR generates more than 80 percent of the taxes supporting the government’s annual budget while the remaining 20 percent is lodged with the different revenue collecting agencies like the Bureau of Customs, among other agencies.
Commissioner Dulay urged taxpayers to voluntarily pay their taxes to the government and not wait for the bureau to audit their books of account that could result to the imposition of the appropriate penalties and surcharges against them.
Aside from the increase in personnel going after taxpayers, the BIR Commissioner said that their personnel are now trained to detect fraud being used by some taxpayers in the use of computerized accounting system so that taxpayers will be obliged to pay the right taxes on time by April 15, 2017.
By HENT
