Tax effort up to 14.1% at end of November, says DOF

The share of tax revenues to the economy further inched up to 14.1 percent as of the end of November in 2014 on the back of robust collections, Department of Finance (DOF) data showed.

Finance Undersecretary Gil S. Beltran noted that the country’s end-of-November tax effort—or tax collection as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP)—was higher than the 13.95 percent posted in the first 11 months of 2013.

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

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

In the case of the BOC, its end-of-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.

BIR’s tax collections, meanwhile, 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 going on an upward trend 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 to the GDP in the Philippines, however, remains lower than the Asean average of 15.8 percent in 2013.

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

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