BIR resumes online application for TIN

THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) will resume starting Monday its online service for those who will apply for taxpayer identification number or TIN.

“Please be advised that eREG system will be accessible beginning Aug. 10, 2015 at 8 a.m.,” the BIR said in an advisory on its website.

The eREG or eREGISTRATION system is a web application for taxpayer registration services such as TIN issuance, payment of registration fee as well as issuance of certificate of registration.

In an Aug. 7 memorandum, BIR Deputy Commissioner for information systems group Lilia C. Guillermo said “the technical issues encountered in eREG system have been resolved.”

“All eREG users can resume online TIN application. RDOs [revenue district offices] will no longer manually issue TlNs,” according to Guillermo.

One module of the eREG system is the so-called eTIN, which the BIR said caters to individual taxpayers such as self-employed individuals (single proprietors and professionals), mixed income earners (for example, an employee and single proprietor and/or professional at the same time), employees, as well as prospective non-resident taxpayers under Executive Order No. 98.

Last May, BIR Commissioner Kim S. Jacinto-Henares said in an interview that the country’s largest tax-collection agency plans to do away with TIN cards made of cardboard and roll out IDs printed on smart cards by next year.

The pilot testing of TIN IDs made of smart cards would start in the second half, Henares had disclosed.

A smart card is defined by BusinessDictionary.com as a “plastic card with embedded microprocessor chip, electronic memory, and a battery,” which is being used to authenticate, manage and store information.

Some of these cards, which have the same size as a credit card, may be swiped through a magnetic reader, BusinessDictionary noted.

Initially, new taxpayers will be issued the smart cards, after which all other registered taxpayers have to switch to the new card and dispose their old IDs by January, according to Henares.

“This initiative has been planned for a long time… It will have a magnetic card and a smart chip to allow it flexibility so that we can use it for other things” in the future, the BIR chief had said, citing that the new ID may eventually also be used to track value-added tax or VAT receipts.

Henares had pointed out that some taxpayers had been complaining that the existing ID could be “easily faked,” while a smart card is deemed to be more secure.

The BIR chief had said they will roll out the new TIN card even as pending legislation for a national ID system languishes in Congress.