BIR misses 11-month goal by just 0.7%

The Bureau of Internal Revenue collected P92.7 billion in November, bolstering hopes that the full year-goal could still be achieved despite the agency missing some monthly targets.

But documents from the BIR showed that November collection was 2.4-percent lower than the P95-billion goal for that month. On the other hand, last month’s yield was 12.5-percent higher than the P82.4 billion collected in November 2010.

This brought revenues in the 11 months to November to P854.5 billion, missing the target of P860.3 billion by 0.7 percent. Compared to the year-ago level of P753.3 billion, the 11-month revenues were up 13.4 percent.

Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim S. Henares said in a statement that the agency’s performance so far shored up hopes that the target of P940 billion for 2011 could still be met.

“The [shortfall] may seem small in percentage terms, but my people at the BIR are fully focused on recouping the P5.8-billion deficit by the end of December,” she said.

In a related development, the BIR has issued a new regulation that takes back the mandatory nature of a new portion of income tax returns, which asks for information on taxpayers’ extra income.

Revenue Regulation No. 19-2011, signed last Dec. 9, says filling up the “supplemental information” part of BIR forms 1700 and 1701 was now optional.

BIR form No. 1700 is for taxpayers who earn purely from compensation while 1701 is for the self-employed. A third form, 1702, is for non-individuals like corporations and partnerships and does not ask for the supplementary information.

RR 19-2011 amended Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 57-2011, signed last Nov. 25, which said that providing the additional data was optional for 2011 filings but mandatory for 2012.

In turn, RMC No. 57-2011 amended RMC No. 40-2011, which was signed last Sept. 5 and did not mention anything about being optional.

Also, the latest regulation formalized the results of a hearing at the House committee on ways and means held last week, during which Henares—along with Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima—bowed down to pressure from lawmakers for the BIR to recall RMC 57-2011.

In the latest version of forms 1700 and 1701, the taxpayer is told that filling up of the supplemental information portion was optional and that “the figures placed therein should be properly documented and/or substantiated.”