The Bureau of Internal Revenue main office in Quezon City. (File photo from Philippine Daily Inquirer)
MANILA, Philippines—There would be no extension of the deadline to pay taxes for 2021, which falls in April this year, as the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) aims to hit its biggest monthly revenue target collection and amid signs of economic recovery.
In a revenue memorandum order, Internal Revenue Commissioner Caesar Dulay tasked BIR revenue officers with collecting P252.6 billion in taxes in April, coinciding with the deadline for filing and payment of annual income tax returns (ITR).
In 2020, amid the then most stringent enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) imposed at the onset of the pandemic, the BIR moved the 2019 ITR filing and payment deadline to June as relief to taxpayers restricted from moving around.
Last year, the BIR no longer extended the tax deadline as the economy gradually reopened and quarantine restrictions eased. In 2021, the country’s biggest tax collection agency grew its collections by 6.5 percent to P2.078 trillion, although slightly below the P2.081-trillion target. Pre-pandemic, the BIR collected a record P2.18 trillion in 2019.
For 2022, the BIR had been tasked with collecting a total of P2.44 trillion in taxes.
The bulk of the BIR’s targeted tax take for 2022 would come from taxes slapped on personal net income and corporate profits, amounting to an estimated P1.23 trillion.
The BIR also intended to collect P501.6 billion in the 12-percent value-added tax (VAT) slapped on consumption, P136.7 billion in percentage taxes, as well as P226.4 billion in other taxes.
At the agency’s 2022 national tax campaign launch earlier this month, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the BIR, as the country’s largest tax-collector, must sustain its modernization and digital transformation to facilitate not only transparency but also convenience for taxpayers in order to ramp up collections.