Photo of Revenue Commissioner Lilia Guillermo. Photo from the Facebook of Kristian Ablan, Assistant Secretary for Policy and Legislative Affairs at the Presidential Communications Office. and Program Director for Freedom of Information.
Revenue Commissioner Lilia Guillermo has ordered the resumption of mission order issuances to run after suspected tax evaders two months after the previous administration suspended field audits due to a controversy involving Megaworld Corp.
“To carry out the mandate of the BIR [Bureau of Internal Revenue] to collect taxes, the resumption of the conduct of the tax compliance verification drive operations is required in order to expand further the tax base, enhance tax compliance on the part of taxpayers and act on, investigate and verify complaints involving alleged violations of the internal revenue tax laws,” Guillermo said in a revenue memorandum circular dated July 19 but posted on the BIR’s website only on Thursday.
BIR personnel are empowered to undertake tax compliance verification through mission orders.
“Thus, the suspension of the issuance of mission orders insofar as authorizing revenue officers to conduct tax compliance verification drives, which includes verification of complaints involving alleged violations of Tax Code, is hereby lifted effective immediately,” she said.
But Guillermo said issuing mission orders for other BIR antitax evasion operations other than tax compliance verification “shall remain suspended until further notice.”
To recall, then BIR chief Caesar Dulay on May 30 suspended all field audits and operations related to examining and verifying taxpayers’ books of accounts, records, as well as other transactions. As such, the BIR had stopped issuing new mission orders as well as letters of authority or audit notices.