BIR raises concern over hardware meltdown at DICT data center

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has expressed “serious concern” over the two-week unavailability of its Electronic Tax Information System (eTIS), affecting collections from large taxpayers.

In a July 18 letter to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Acting Secretary Eliseo M. Rio Jr., Internal Revenue Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay raised concerns over the major hardware meltdown on July 3 at the DICT’s data center, which housed the core systems and several eServices of the country’s biggest revenue agency.

“The said server breakdown rendered eTIS unavailable and inaccessible to the BIR. It has been two weeks now and it is now causing an enormous disruption of eTIS operations, affecting taxpayers of the Large Taxpayer Service (LTS) and Revenue Region (RR) 8-Makati,” Dulay said.

As the eTIS was inaccessible for two weeks already, the BIR was “now expressing a very serious concern,” Dulay added.

“The prolonged unavailability/inaccessibility of eTIS will ultimately have dire consequences on revenues collected/generated by the LTS and RR Makati,” the BIR chief said.

“We need the DICT Data Center Support Team to move more expediently, with urgency and to provide a timeline of activities on hardware restoration. The BIR would want to know when availability/accessibility of eTIS will be restored,” he added.

In a subsequent report to Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, Dulay said there was no formal reply yet from the DICT.

Of the BIR’s P2.074-trillion collection target for 2018, the bulk, or about P1.3 trillion, was expected to come from the LTS. —BEN O. DE VERA