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THE
Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) said it would implement
its information sharing with local government units (LGUs)
on its taxpayers’ profile in a move to generate more
collections in the coming months.
The BIR
said it will implement Department Order 9-08, which
mandates it to provide LGUs copies of updated master
lists of taxpayers classified by industry, and of those
firms whose business permits were renewed for the
current year.
The BIR
said it would also provide the lists of retired
businesses and of those taxpayers with discrepancies on
gross sales or receipts.
The BIR
will also furnish copies to the Bureau of Local
Government Finance but an officer will have to request
for the information.
The
agency, through its revenue district officer, will also
allow LGUs to access important documents, such as a
company’s income-tax returns, value-added tax returns
and percentage tax returns pertaining to any person,
partnership, corporation, or association that are
subject to local taxes, fees and charges.
“These
information will be used exclusively to ascertain,
assess and collect the correct amount of
internal-revenue taxes, and that it shall not be
disclosed to any unauthorized person with due regard to
the security of the taxpayer’s information,” the BIR
said in a statement.
The LGUs,
through the local assessor, on the other hand, will also
furnish the BIR with a copy of the master list of
taxpayers and those that have applied for and been given
a business permit.
The BIR
did not say how much it expects to collect from the deal
with the LGUs.
Such
information-sharing between agencies is not new in the
government, especially when there is no network
infrastructure to connect these offices with each
other.
The
Bureau of Customs, the government’s second-largest
revenue generator, has been signing agreements with
various agencies and groups in order to countercheck
whether the right taxes and duties are paid.
In the
recent months, the Customs had initiated information
sharing with the Land Transportation Office, Department
of Agriculture and Maritime Industry Authority, the main
agencies giving import permits, in order to ascertain if
the importers are paying their right taxes and duties.
So far,
the BOC said it had additional revenues of at least P2
billion from information sharing.
Earlier,
the BIR, the government’s largest revenue generator,
directed the top officials of its large taxpayers group
and operations group to maximize efforts to meet the
agency’s target collection of P845 million, or 76
percent of the budget requirement of the national
government. |
