Cigarette packs to get stamps

MANILA, Philippines–It will be all systems go for the rollout of the Internal Revenue Stamps Integrated System (IRSIS), as all tobacco manufacturers as well as importers are expected to put tax stamps on cigarette packs starting September.

Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares said on Thursday that the IRSIS would be launched on Aug. 1 during the agency’s 110th anniversary celebration.

Although the implementation of the IRSIS is scheduled to be effective on Sept. 1, a number of tobacco firms have told the Bureau of Internal Revenue that they would already put tax stamps on cigarettes to be produced as early as next month, Henares said on the sidelines of the League of Corporate Foundations’ Corporate Social Responsibility Expo Conference.

All manufacturers and importers are expected to comply with the IRSIS, she said.

By January next year, all packs of cigarettes to be sold in the market should have the tax stamp, as companies are given until yearend to sell or pull out of retail shelves unstamped packs produced until the end of August, Henares said.

“Next year, if you see a cigarette pack without a stamp, it means that the product is either already an old stock or its manufacturer did not pay taxes,” she said.

Henares described the stamp as “very colorful,” saying that its design would bear an image of the “butanding,” or whale shark.

Since the IRSIS is a track-and-trace system, the stamps will reflect when the cigarette was manufactured as well as when its taxes were paid.

Cigarette manufacturers will shoulder the cost of P0.13 per stamp on each pack. The stamps will be churned out by APO Production Unit Inc., a printing office run by the government, which last year awarded the project’s P1.75-billion security technology supply contract to a consortium of four information technology companies.