Philippines tightens noose on tax evaders

MANILA — It will now be a lot harder for tax evaders to cheat on their taxable income following the formal launching today of the Revenue Watch Dashboard (RWD) and the Local Government Unit-Revenue Assurance System (LGU-RAS) of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

No less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo attended the launch of the two computerized systems during a command conference at the BIR’s headquarters in Quezon City this morning.

Stressing that there would be no “sacred cows” in the campaign against tax evasion, the President added that the government is determined to go after tax cheats and prosecute them.

Also present at the command conference were Finance Secretary Margarito Teves, acting BIR Commissioner Lilian Hefti and other DOF and BIR officials.

The President had earlier presided over a similar command conference at the Bureau of Customs (BoC) to personally assess the BoC’s revenue collection performance and find ways to recover the revenue collection shortfall in the first semester of the year.
The RWD is a state of the art online performance monitoring system that will promote transparency, enhance tax compliance and encourage achievement across the various tax units.

A computerized online facility, the RWD monitors actual revenue collections against collection targets at all levels of the BIR organization, from the national level to the examiners.

The LGU-RAS, on the other hand, is also a state of the art on line performance monitoring system that will give the BIR real time results to tax queries on the LGU level.

It matches BIR with LGU data using existing BIR Data Quality and Matching Infrastructure that reports immediately inconsistent declarations by taxpayers to uncover revenue opportunities for both the BIR and LGU.

Aside from uncovering non-filers and stop-filers, the LGU-RAS will also report fictitious TIN (Tax Identification Numbers) registration and declarations and tax promote compliance and consistent declarations.

The RWD and LGU-RAS will also allow the BIR to monitor the progress of its revenue collection at any given time, but more importantly, it will identify areas with discrepancies in revenue collection.

Discrepancies such as revenue leakages, returns with inconsistencies, unusual patterns of tax declarations, long running and unresolved notices and audits can be acted upon immediately by the Bureau based on accurate and relevant information.

The President lauded the BIR for introducing the two new programs which she said is an example of technology used to combat tax evasion.

She also congratulated the BIR for exceeding its collection target for July of P56-billion by P1-billion through measures focused on improving collection efficiency.

The specific actions undertaken by the BIR for July 2007 included the following:

1) Measures to detect and deter proliferation of fly-by-night establishments.

2) Reiteration and clarification of top 10,000 private corporations and government entities of their mandatory obligation to withhold taxes on their purchases and expenditures.

3) Mandating additional audit procedures and documentation on examiners’ report to address leakage in VAT (Value Added Tax) collections.

4) Expansion and constant exchange of information with other government entities such as the Insurance Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, and LGUs.

5) Specific audit of PEZA (Philippine Export Zone Authority) and Board of Investments-registered enterprises with data on error and claimed income tax holiday; and,

6) Sending of reminder letters to all large taxpayers with a plea to improve voluntary compliance.