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THE
Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) said it would complete
a partial automation of its operations and connect
various collection districts to the national office in
Manila by September.
However, the country’s tax collector
needs more grants to reach and connect tax collectors in
far-flung areas of the country.
Commissioner Lilian Hefti said the
bureau, is scouting for additional funding sources to
complete the automation project and connect all BIR
offices nationwide.
Hefti said the current project, which
secured technical and financial funding from the
Millennium Challenge Corp., (MCC) would connect some 90
percent of the bureau’s regional district offices.
“Our ultimate goal is to build a
taxpayer database to support…collection and enforcement
efforts,” the commissioner said.
By September 100 of its 119 revenue
district offices nationwide will be connected. She said
they were not able to secure enough money to get online
the remaining 19 districts that include such far-flung
offices as Tawi Tawi in southern Philippines. Most of
these offices are in fourth- and fifth-class
municipalities.
The project involves the automation of
gathering, storage and retrieval of taxpayers’ data
from regional branches and the national office. The
bureau has changed its tack in increasing the number of
companies that should comply with tax-payment measures
as a result of having been mapped out in previous years.
The funds the BIR still needs would be
used to buy and install computers, servers, network
cables and data- storage facilities to run the bureau’s
integrated taxpayer system in districts that are yet to
be computerized.
The project also supports the training
of BIR personnel to prepare them for the full operation
of the system.
The World Bank is also giving the BIR
assistance to address its backlog in data encoding to
run the system in districts where it is installed.
At the moment most BIR operations are
run manually, except for some bank transactions of
taxpayers.
The MCC, a US government entity that
supports development programs and projects all over the
world, gave the Philippines some $20.6 million to
develop systems for the BIR, Bureau of Customs and
Office of the Ombudsman. Of the amount, $9.4 million was
allocated for the BIR.
The grant is being administered by the
United States Agency for International Development.
The Philippine government needs to match
the money with a counterpart budget of P1 billion for
anticorruption measures.
Manila is targeting a collection of
P1.236 trillion this year. BIR accounts for 76 percent,
or P844.95 billion, of the budget requirement. VG
Cabuag |
