DTI appeals for more time to draft IRR of tax incentives law

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and other involved state agencies will request Congress for an extension of the period given to formulate the proposed implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for the Tax Incentives Management and Transparency Act (Timta).

President Aquino signed into law last December the bill, which sought to “promote fiscal accountability and transparency in the grant and management of tax incentives.”

According to the DTI, the IRR is already 70 percent done but issues on data submission and evaluation of tax holiday applications continued to hound its completion, Trade Undersecretary Ceferino S. Rodolfo said.

He said the DTI, through the Board of Investments, has yet to reconcile certain concerns with the Department of Finance.

The last meeting between the two agencies was held on Thursday. It saw discussions revolving around the specific data and information that should be submitted by companies to investment promotion agencies (IPAs), IPAs to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), BIR to the Bureau of Customs and DOF, and IPAs to the National Economic Development Authority (Neda). Also threshed out was BOI’s evaluation of income tax holiday applications of investors and the conduct of cost-benefit analysis by Neda.

“Things were already moving forward. The BOI and the DOF have been meeting with the concerned agencies and the other IPAs to reconcile and consolidate inputs on a number of concerns on the proposed IRR provisions,” Rodolfo said.

Within the BOI, trade officials also conducted regular meetings and came up with different versions of the draft IRR last January. Several meetings were also held with the IPAs and with the interagency technical working group composed of the BOI, DOF, BIR, BOC and the Neda.

“The interagency coordination was an important part of the process for drafting the IRR. We wanted to ensure the IRR mapped out a robust mechanism that would show accurate and most-up-to-date information. At the same time, there was a need to make certain that … no unnecessary procedural burden was passed on to the investors,” Rodolfo said.