Tax payment season again

What an uncanny coincidence!

The last day for the filing of individual income tax returns this year is on April 15, Black Saturday, the day after Good Friday.

For devout Catholic taxpayers, the timing is like Calvary happening on two successive days. The first may be described as a spiritual experience, while the second is a financial sacrifice that is fraught with serious implications if not timely made.

If we go by past experience when the tax payment deadline was made close to the Holy Week, then there is a strong possibility that the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) will extend the payment period by, at most, a week, to presumably accommodate the taxpayers who may not be able to comply with their civic duty due to religious commitments.

The obligation to file income tax returns on or before April 15 applies to two classes of taxpayers, namely:

(a) Those earning purely compensation income including nonbusiness or nonprofession related income, and marginal income earners; and,

(b) Self-employed individuals, estates and trusts, including those with mixed income, i.e., compensation income and income from business and practice of the profession.

Mercifully, taxpayers who derive their income solely from one employer and have been deducted the appropriate withholding tax for such income are spared the ordeal of filing income tax returns.

Under existing regulations, their employers are obliged instead to submit to the BIR, through an “alpha list,” the names of these employees, the compensation they received and the tax withheld from their salaries.

This scheme recognizes the absurdity of the erstwhile requirement of compelling that class of taxpayers to file tax returns despite the fact that the taxes payable for the compensation they received had already been deducted the corresponding income tax by their employers.

The exemption from the filing requirement has given relief not only to the taxpayers concerned (who constitute a sizeable block of taxpayers) but also to the BIR personnel who do the mundane task of sorting and acknowledging receipt of the tax returns.

With less than two weeks to go before April 15, all appears to be quiet in the BIR. In the past, in the runoff to that date, the BIR was all over the media exhorting taxpayers to prepare and file accurate income tax returns as soon as possible and not to wait for the last hour.

BIR representatives made themselves available to radio and TV stations to inform the people about their tax obligations and answer phoned-in questions about the preparation of tax returns.

During the Aquino administration, then Revenue Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares conducted a sustained campaign to make the public aware about the need to file income tax returns and pay correct taxes.

Her “shame campaign” against medical practitioners, accountants, lawyers and other professionals who paid less taxes than lowly paid teachers helped boost the BIR’s revenue collection.

Understandably, her strategy did not endear her to the professionals but it accomplished its objective and raised awareness about the need to allocate equitably the burden of tax payment to all the citizens based on their financial capability.

This time, the present BIR leadership does not seem to be in the mood to make the taxpayers conscious of their tax reporting and payment obligations. The need to collect as much income taxes as possible this season cannot be underestimated because the April 15 revenue collection represents a lion’s share of the country’s total revenue collections for the year.

Compared to his predecessor, Revenue Commission Cesar Dulay is practically a nonentity in the business sector. He has hardly been heard of, except through press releases, and the public is in the dark about the initiatives of his office to meet the revenue requirements of the administration.

It is not yet too late for the BIR to mobilize its resources to make the taxpayers conscious of their duty and responsibility to pay the correct amount of taxes on or before April 15.

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