BIR sees big collection as tax season ends

The day of reckoning has come.

The government’s controversial public campaigns to encourage more people to be upfront with their taxes will finally be known this week as this year’s tax season comes to an end.

Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Kim Henares said the government was hopeful that various efforts aimed at boosting tax revenues would work.

The effectiveness of these campaigns would be key to funding the state’s aggressive spending plans.

“We hope so,” Henares said, when asked whether revenues for the month would exceed the target set at the start of the year.  “We will know if all this is working. We hope this is all working because we’ve done a lot,” she told the Inquirer.

Last year, the April tax take reached P149 billion, beating the target for the month by 4.4 percent.

Tax collection targets for the month of April are usually the highest for any single month for the year because of the tax deadline.

At P142.7 billion, the BIR’s goal for April 2013 was the highest for that year, particularly because the deadline for the filing of annual tax returns falls on that month.

This year, the target has been set at a higher P176.51 billion.

To make way for tax payments, local banks were allowed to keep their branches open by an extra two hours to 5 p.m. every day since the start of April.

Banks were also allowed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to operate on the two Saturdays leading up to the April 15 deadline.

To boost collections, the government launched several public information campaigns to encourage small businesses and self-employed individuals to declare their proper income and pay the corresponding taxes.

Among these were the Department of Finance’s “Tax Watch” shame campaign launched last July.

This involves the weekly publication of lists of individual and corporate taxpayers in various industries.

Tax Watch’s goal is to show the public who among self-employed individuals and companies big and small pay taxes disproportionately smaller than the size of their wealth.

“We want to raise awareness about tax payments and ask the public if the numbers we observe make sense,” Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said in a previous statement.

For instance, lawyers paid an average of P200 in taxes each in 2011.

Public school teachers who make much less, meanwhile, paid nearly P29,000 for the same year.

Ahead of this year’s tax deadline, the BIR likewise launched its “Register, File, and Pay” (RFP) information campaign that teaches taxpayers through print, television, and online ads how to pay their dues.