Not even the COVID-19 pandemic and its ensuing lockdown stopped the taxman from running after erring firms, with an additional P547.9 million collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) during the first nine months to augment government revenues, the Department of Finance (DOF) said.
In a statement on Wednesday, the DOF said the BIR’s “Oplan Kandado” program, which temporarily padlocks unregistered businesses, closed down 178 establishments from January to September, forcing them to settle their unpaid taxes.
However, the number of commercial establishments caught and the amount of additional taxes collected under Oplan Kandado slowed down due to quarantine restrictions on the movement of people. Last year, the BIR shut down 743 companies and collected a bigger P1.9 billion in unpaid taxes.
On top of running after unregistered taxpayers, BIR Deputy Commissioner Arnel Guballa recently reported to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III that the country’s biggest tax-collection agency also lodged 14 cases at the Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) to collect P338 million in tax liabilities.
A bigger P3.4 billion across 72 tax-evasion complaints earlier filed by the BIR at the Department of Justice were also currently under preliminary investigation, Guballa said.
The BIR leads the filing of charges under its Run After Tax Evaders (Rate) program.
In 2019, the BIR elevated to the CTA 38 cases worth P4.9 billion in tax liabilities, while it also filed 309 cases covering allegedly unpaid taxes amounting to P19.1 billion under Rate.
Amid a pandemic-induced recession, the BIR collected P1.59 trillion in taxes from January to October, down 10.4 percent from P1.78 trillion during the first 10 months of last year.
The BIR’s end-October tax take was already 94 percent of its downscaled P2.5-trillion full-year target.
Guballa told the Inquirer last week that the BIR possibly already hit its 2020 goal as early as November, although they were still awaiting the complete collection figures as remittances of withholding compensation for last month would come in only on Dec. 10.