BIR misses 2007 tax collection goal by P53.7B

The Bureau of Internal Revenue's 2007 tax take fell short of the goal by P53.7 billion, due to weak collection in the first half of the year, the agency reported Wednesday. In a statement, the BIR said its collections amounted to P712.098 billion last year, missing the goal P765.858 billion. However, the 2007 take was 9.1 percent or P59.365 billion higher than the P652.732 billion collected in 2006. The BIR accounts for about 65 percent of total government revenues. The BIR blamed the agency’s poor tax collections to the weak performance during the first half of the year. This weak performance is widely believed to be the reason President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo sacked former Commissioner Jose Mario Buñag last July. President Arroyo replaced Buñag with career official Lilian Hefti shortly after. For the second half of the year, the BIR said collections amounted to P377.387 billion. “The second semester collection accounts for 53 percent of the total collections. The performance of the agency during the second semester is the result of reforms introduced by Commissioner Hefti," the BIR said in the statement. It added that the agency’s collections grew 12.87 percent during the second half of the year compared with 5.13 percent in the first half of the year. The BIR data showed that taxes on net income and profit of corporate and individual taxpayers increased by 12.4 percent to P423.708 billion last year from P376.992 billion in 2006 due to stricter monitoring and improved compliance as well as increased number of taxpayers in the tax net and implementation of quarterly payment of minimum corporate income tax. Value added tax (VAT) collections increased only by 2.83 percent to P149.18 billion from P145.067 billion. This year, the BIR is tasked to collect P845 billion or 10.3 percent more than the 2007 goal of P765.9 billion. The agency said it would continue to maximize the use of data warehouse technology which covers the matching of sales and purchases, BIR records and Bureau of Customs (BOC) records, and matching of income payments of withholding agents with reported income of the recipients as well as information sharing on taxpayers’ data through linkages with various government agencies. Furthermore, it added that it would step up its campaign against tax evaders through Operation RATE (Run After Tax Evaders) by filing of criminal cases before the courts. - GMANews.TV