Gov’t eyes tax amnesty program

LAPU-LAPU CITY—While the Duterte administration will be more aggressive in taking alleged tax evaders to court, it is also planning to embark on a massive tax amnesty program similar to a scheme recently implemented in neighboring Indonesia, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said yesterday.

“The first part of our strategy is to first show the population that we will go after tax evaders. In fact, we’ve already filed a case—probably the largest case filed in recent years of [almost] P10 billion against what we suspect is a very large tax evader. They evaded taxes on cigarettes and we filed the first lawsuit of roughly $200 million. We will file more cases against them because we have more evidence,” Dominguez said in a television interview on the sidelines of the Asean Finance Ministers’ Meeting here.

Dominguez was referring to the P9.56-billion tax evasion case filed by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) against homegrown cigarette manufacturer Mighty Corp. at the Department of Justice last month.

Last Wednesday, Internal Revenue Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay said the BIR was preparing to file at least three more cases against Mighty as the first case covered only the raid in Pampanga that yielded cigarette packs bearing fake tax stamps.

The BIR and the Bureau of Customs also discovered counterfeit stamps affixed on products seized in Zamboanga, General Santos City, Cebu, Tacloban City and Bulacan during the past two months.

“As a second step, we will most likely come up with a tax amnesty program. But you know, tax amnesty will not work if [tax evaders] don’t believe you can actually go after them. First, we go after them [to] show that this government means business and has the political will to stop tax evasion. Then we will design a tax amnesty, most likely very similar to what Sri Mulyani devised,” Dominguez said, referring to Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati.

In September last year, Dominguez said the government was considering an amnesty for taxpayers with deficiencies in payments of property taxes, estate taxes, regular taxes such as income taxes and value-added tax as well as an amnesty on pending tax cases in courts.

Dominguez had also said that the Department of Finance was looking at settlement through the payment of a minimum of 40-percent basic tax as amnesty tax.