Tax effort rose to 14.1% in November

THE LEVEL of tax revenues as a percentage of economic output further inched up to 14.1 percent as of end-November last year on the back of robust collections, Department of Finance (DOF) data showed.

Finance Undersecretary Gil S. Beltran noted that the country’s end-November tax effort—or tax collection as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP)—was higher than the 13.9 percent posted in the first 11 months of 2013.

The end-November figure was also an improvement from end-September’s tax-to-GDP ratio of 14.08 percent.

The DOF’s two revenue collection agencies, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), both saw their collections grow during the January to November period.

In the case of the BOC, its end-November collections of duties and taxes jumped by 17.8 percent to P331.2 billion from P281.1 billion during the same 11-month period in 2013.

As for the BIR, tax collections from January to November grew 9 percent to P1.22 trillion from P1.12 trillion in the previous year.

The country’s tax effort is on an uptrend from 13.3 percent in 2013, 12.9 percent in 2012, 12.4 percent in 2011 and 12.2 percent in 2010.

The ratio of the taxes collected versus the nominal GDP in the Philippines, however, remains lower than the Asean average of 15.8 percent in 2013.

Last month, Beltran said the DOF aims “to push the revenue effort further up by at least one-half percentage point of GDP.”

The Aquino administration targets to further raise the tax effort to 16.6 percent by 2016.