BIR set to sue fake stamp tax perpetrators

The Bureau of Internal Revenue will take to court within the year those found responsible for the proliferation of fake tax stamps on cigarette products, a ranking official said Tuesday.

Revenue Deputy Commissioner Jesus Clint O. Aranas said the country’s biggest tax collection agency would prosecute all involved in counterfeiting internal revenue stamps, whether the cigarette manufacturers themselves or traders.

“We would like to be fair in our prosecution. We’re doing our investigation before we do anything drastic,” he said.

Aranas said some of those that use fake stamps were smugglers. “I had prosecuted in Pampanga an importer of smuggled items where they put fake stamps; it’s not necessarily the cigarette manufacturer,” he said.

Asked if it could be a different case for Bulacan-based Mighty Corp., whose products were all locally manufactured, Aranas said the BIR was “looking into [it] now…If they’re in violation, we haven’t ascertained it yet.”

Aranas said most cigarette brands had been found to bear fake tax stamps, even products of market leader PMFTC Inc. and other companies, although in “limited” volumes. “But it’s not conclusive that the fake stamps came from them [the cigarette firms]. Because there also are [smuggled] imported cigarettes with fake stamps,” he said.

According to Aranas, the BIR is also investigating the entry of fake cigarettes, which also bear fake tax stamps.

“It’s really something that we want to look at it as a whole, because even the cigarette manufacturers have to protect themselves from the incursion of all these fake products because it destroys the market. They not only don’t pay taxes, they also bring in [fake] products that compete with the [genuine] products that carry the name,” he said.

Moving forward, Aranas said the BIR would pitch better security features for the next set of cigarette tax stamps to be printed by government printer APO Production Unit that would remain affordable to tobacco players. He noted that other markets such as Thailand were also encountering the same problems.

On Monday, Revenue Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay said the BIR was planning to get to the bottom of the proliferation of fake stamps in the market through a dialogue with all cigarette firms.

Dulay said the BIR officials would likely meet with the cigarette companies next week.

Earlier, the BIR confiscated at a mall in Cebu a big volume of cigarettes bearing fake tax stamps, reportedly manufactured by Mighty, worth almost P2.5 million in excise taxes.