Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares on Tuesday promised to release the revenue regulations on the Personal Equity Retirement Account (Pera) law anytime this month after all the contentious issues are resolved.

Henares said the issues on defining the income and investments of Filipino migrant workers were already resolved in separate rules issued earlier this year.  

“We will just follow what the law says. It will be a strict implementation of the Pera law,” Henares said, but declined to cite any of the features of the revenue regulations.

But according to a draft, each Pera contributor is entitled to a 5-percent tax credit of his/her actual contribution or investment for the year. It allows a maximum investment per year of P100,000 for resident Filipino citizens and P200,000 for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).  

Pera refers to a person’s provident personal savings and investment plan. It is a voluntary retirement account for the exclusive use of the contributor and will be invested solely in domestic Pera investment products.

Since it carries a tax relief, the Department of Finance estimates that revenue losses from the law’s implementation could reach P12 billion during its first year of implementation.  

The Bureau of Internal Revenue earlier said it does not want the law to be used as a tax shield and only those qualified should be allowed to get the tax breaks. For instance, the government only wants legal migrants or those with valid contracts to receive the tax breaks and not the irregular or illegal OFWs.

A PERA investment product may be in the form of a unit investment trust fund, share of stock of mutual fund, annuity contract, insurance pension product, preneed pension plan, shares of stock or other securities listed and traded in the local stock exchange, exchange-traded bond, and government securities.

The government can then issue a Pera tax-credit certificate to the investment owner, who should be paid for his/her income tax for the same taxable year. The current draft states that the tax certificate can only be used for a particular taxable year and cannot be carried over to the next year.

The Pera Law, which was passed in 2008, aims to increase the retirement fund of Filipinos.