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THE
Bureau of Internal Revenue served notice on Tuesday it
will not rest on its achievements in 2006 until the
agency has remitted at least P730 billion to the
Treasury this year.
BIR
chief Jose Mario Buñag made the pledge before a large
gathering of taxpayers and before his boss, Finance
Secretary Margarito Teves, saying the bulk of forecast
flows should come from the country’s largest and most
profitable corporations.
Some
P345.5 billion were to come from the sector this year
based on Buñag’s calculations.
At
Tuesday’s launching of the BIR’s national tax campaign,
Buñag said the number of entities and individuals ranked
as the country’s largest taxpayers have grown by 19
percent, or to 1,289 already.
This
compares with only 1,081 large taxpayers when last
surveyed by the BIR a year ago.
Buñag
said a special BIR unit deals almost exclusively with
this group of taxpayers because they represent 53
percent of the total annual tax take.
There
used to be only 1,280 large taxpayers so identified by
the BIR, but Buñag added nine more entities to the list
only recently.
Buñag
actually collected P651.9 billion worth of taxes last
year, up 20.1 percent from a year earlier.
This was
because the large taxpayer service of the BIR improved
its collection efficiency by 18 percent.
He
calculated the higher efficiency ratio contributed to
the total tax collection last year by some P105 billion.
Three
weeks earlier Buñag met with a number of large taxpayers
to hear some of their concerns and problems, mostly
centering on tax audit and tax investigation issues.
That
meeting highlighted the need to inform some large
taxpayers on the subject of withholding tax, which is
essentially a tax on income collected in advance.
Buñag
said he will focus his collection activities this year
on the manufacturing sector, retailers and wholesalers,
the mining sector, the automotive industry, tobacco
manufacturers, alcohol and beverage makers, cigarette
makers and the petroleum industry, among others. |
