Tax collections slide amid ECQ
The extended tax payment deadlines as well as restrictions on the sale and transport of “sin” products have hurt the government’s revenue collections as of mid-April, the Department of Finance (DOF) said.
In a statement on Saturday, the DOF said latest preliminary data showed that as of April 17, the combined year-to-date tax take of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and Bureau of Customs (BOC) fell by 26.3 percent to P641.62 billion from P871.19 billion a year ago. The amount is also 40-percent short of the P1.073-trillion goal.
The BIR collected P480.64 billion from Jan. 1 to April 17, down 32 percent year-on-year and 45.3 percent off the target.
For April 1-17 alone, the BIR’s tax collection slid to P25.01 billion, way short of the full-month program of P288.75 billion.
To give taxpayers some relief amid the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), the BIR had twice extended the tax filing and payment deadlines, including that on the 2019 income tax returns (ITRs), which had been mandated for settlement on or before April 15 under the Tax Code.
Internal Revenue Deputy Commissioner Arnel Guballa told the Inquirer last Friday that the BIR was “now doing the necessary adjustments to align with the IATF’s (Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases) pronouncement,” referring to the extension up to May 15 of the ECQ in various parts of the country on top of general community quarantine imposed elsewhere.
The BIR’s tax take accounted for 78 percent of total government collections, the DOF noted.
Meanwhile, the BOC’s collections of import duties and other taxes as of April 15 declined by 2.1 percent year-on-year, and were also 17 percent below-target for the 4.5-month period.
In the first half of April, the BOC’s tax take reached P15.57 billion, down 30.9 percent year-on-year and 42.8 percent below goal.
For April 1-15, combined BIR and BOC collections hit P40.57 billion, down from P219.88 billion a year ago and way below the P315.95-billion target.
Also, the DOF said revenues from excise taxes slapped on “sin” products such as tobacco and alcohol—which it described as “consistent large excise tax collection drawers”—dropped as of mid-April.
In the case of tobacco products, excise tax collections from Jan. 1 to April 15 reached P33.19 billion, down 42.5 percent year-on-year.
Excise taxes on alcoholic drinks generated P17.85 billion in the same period, down 26 percent from a year ago.
This was despite the higher taxes slapped on these products under Republic Act No. 11346, which raised cigarette taxes, and RA 11467 covering alcohol, heated tobacco and vaping products, which both took effect last Jan. 1.
Alcoholic beverages had been covered by national and local government liquor bans amid the ECQ, while transport of cigarettes were rarely allowed across checkpoints as these were not considered as essential items.
Last week, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said he was not amenable to lifting the liquor ban, but the government might exempt cigarettes from quarantine movement restrictions as smuggling increased when illicit traders took advantage of dwindling supply in the formal market.
Amid the ECQ, cigarette manufacturers JTI Philippines and PMFTC Inc. stopped domestic production, although they retained “very small” skeleton workforce for their export operations.
The DOF said the BIR’s total year-to-date excise tax collections as of April 15 had reached P76.47 billion across all product categories, down 33 percent year-on-year and below the P161.84-billion target. INQ
