BIR looking into dead people's bank accounts

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has asked banks to submit records of deceased persons in the last five years to boost estate tax collections and see whether financial institutions connive with heirs to evade taxes. 

 

“We’re asking banks to give us the bank statements of those persons who died in the past several years.  We want to know whether they are compliant or allowing the heirs of the deceased to withdraw money,” BIR commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares told reporters. 

 

“We will require them to submit the statement of accounts, if they don’t we will subpoena them,” she said.

 

Henares noted bank secrecy laws are automatically lifted once a person dies, allowing the government to look into the bank accounts of the deceased.

 

Banks will be held criminally liable if found conniving with heirs of the dead in circumventing the law, she said. 

 

Under the Revenue Code, heirs are required to file an estate tax return within six months after a descendant has died so a transfer of property ownership may done. This covers properties valued at over P200,000. 

 

Some, however, skirt the law by withdrawing the accounts of the deceased without first declaring the incident of death.

 

Department of Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima said annual collections from estate tax had been very low except in 2012, when the amount collected surged 60 percent from a year earlier.

 

The Finance chief wants to increase estate tax collections to P50 billion from the current P850 million to P1 billion amid a resurgent property market and low interest rates.

 

“Given the increase in asset values, we believe that estate tax collections should be higher. We’ll be stepping up efforts to monitor payments made by heirs of deceased persons,” he said.

 

Only 29,198 estate tax returns were filed in 2007, 29,863 in 2008 and 26,811 in 2009, latest BIR data showed. — SOA/VS, GMA News