Main office of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (File photo AFP)
MANILA, Philippines—The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) will allow filing and payment of 2021 income tax returns (ITRs) until April 18, as the annual April 15 deadline to do so fell on a holiday — Good Friday — this year.
In a bulletin issued this month, Internal Revenue Commissioner Caesar Dulay reminded authorized agent-banks to accept tax payments until 5 p.m. on April 18, the Monday following the mandatory yearly tax-payment deadline.
Under an agreement among the BIR, the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) and agent-banks, banking hours to accommodate taxpayers will be extended to 5 p.m., instead of the daily 3 p.m. cut-off, from April 1 to 18, 2022.
Also, since the two Saturdays nearest to the tax deadline were also public holidays — April 9 commemorates Araw ng Kagitingan, while April 16 will be Black Saturday — Dulay told banks to allow tax payments on the preceding Saturdays of March 26 and April 2.
In another bulletin, Dulay reminded authorized agent-banks of their responsibilities during tax-payment deadline season, including:
- Accepting all taxpayers’ payments
- Receiving ITRs
- Stamping “received” on the attached financial statements to ITRs on certain pages
- “Ensuring that pertinent portions of the ITRs and/or deposit slips are machine-validated and the details of tax payments should be clearly imprinted in all copies thereof.”
Dulay said banks can also accept check payments as long as made payable to the BIR; accept tax payments from taxpayers who were already within banks’ premises by the close of the extended banking hours; as well as accept manually filed and out-of-district ITRs and their corresponding payments whenever electronic tax payment channels were unavailable.
“Do not impose penalties for any violations committed by the taxpayers in the filing of their tax returns and payments of internal revenue taxes, since it is the [BIR] which will be the one to impose whatever appropriate penalties incident to the said violations, in accordance with existing policies,” Dulay added.
Dulay earlier tasked BIR revenue officers with collecting P256.9 billion in April — the highest monthly goal for this year, amid the tax-filing payment and payment deadline for last year’s dues.
For 2022, the BIR had been tasked with collecting a total of P2.44 trillion in taxes amid economic recovery from the pandemic-induced slump.
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 the month of 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 were eased.
In 2021, the country’s largest tax-collection agency grew its collections by 6.5 percent to P2.078 trillion, although slightly below the P2.081-trillion target set by the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC). Pre-pandemic, the BIR collected a record-high P2.18 trillion in 2019.