MANILA, Philippines?If you sell anything worth more than P25, better issue a receipt.

Otherwise, you?d be the target of a forthcoming crackdown by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) against so-called ?informal? merchants making up around 40 percent of the economy.

Hard pressed to collect P860 billion in taxes by the end of the year, BIR Commissioner Kim Henares announced a variety of strategies to ensure that the government would get the right amount from taxpayers.

Speaking in a press briefing in Malacañang on Wednesday, she said the effort would equally target tax evaders from a cross section of society?tycoons, celebrities, doctors and other professionals included.

But one sector that stood out in the BIR campaign involved members of the ?underground economy? such as market vendors, sari-sari store owners, and pedicab drivers.

?The rule in the National Revenue Code says that if you sell something worth more than P25, you should really be issuing receipt,? Henares told reporters. ?That?s the law. They should comply with it.?

Noting that market vendors, for instance, hardly issued receipts, the official said the BIR was now preparing an ?IT-enhanced? mapping system that would identify informal businesses and monitor if they were paying the right taxes?or were paying at all.

?These are the things we?re looking at and we?ll be implementing it in the near future,? she said.

Henares did not buy the argument that members of the underground economy were generally poor, that the government should concentrate on big-time tax evaders.

?This is my answer to that?if you go to the marketplace, vendors, I?m not saying all but especially those with fixed stalls, I think they earn more than what fixed-income earners like us do,? she said.