The country’s two biggest tax-collection agencies exceeded their downscaled end-September revenue targets, although still short of their prepandemic levels last year, as the economy gradually opened from a stringent COVID-19 lockdown.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III on Monday said the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) collected P1.42 trillion in taxes from January to September, which was 8.67-percent bigger than its nine-month goal of P1.31 trillion.
The Bureau of Customs (BOC) also surpassed its nine-month target of P372 billion, generating 6.81-percent more at P397.5 billion in import duties and other taxes.
However, both the BIR and the BOC’s respective actual collections as of September fell below levels during the first nine months of last year, which amounted to P1.6 trillion and P470 billion, respectively.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which had pushed the economy into a recession, the revenue agencies’ 2020 targets were slashed several times by the Cabinet-level Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC)—the BIR to P1.69 trillion from P2.58 trillion originally, while the BOC’s had been cut to P506.2 billion from P731 billion previously.
In a statement on Monday, the BOC said its collections in September amounted to P50.2 billion, exceeding its P37.7-billion goal for the month.
It was the fourth straight month since June that the BOC’s actual take was more than the reduced monthly collection program.
Citing a preliminary report of its financial service, the BOC said 14 of the 17 ports had beaten their September targets, namely: Aparri, Batangas, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Clark, Davao, Limay, Manila International Container Port, Ninoy Aquino International Airport, San Fernando, Subic, Surigao, Tacloban and Zamboanga.
The BOC said its above-target collections to date were due to “intensified collective effort of all ports, gradual improvement of importation volume and the government’s effort in ensuring unhampered movement of goods domestically and internationally considering the pandemic situation.”
Customs Commissioner Rey Leonardo Guerrero said the BOC also remained committed to fighting smuggling and technical smuggling, including undervaluation and misdeclaration of goods. —Ben O. de Vera INQ