Tax court rejects ex-Forever Living agent’s appeal

MANILA, Philippines – The Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) denied the appeal to reconsider a motion for probation of a former multimillionaire agent of Forever Living Products, a popular a multi-level marketing company.

In an en banc decision dated November 21 that the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) received on December 3, the appellate court said it denied Benjamin Kintanar’s appeal for probation since this is it lacked merit.

The court explained that “It essentially rejects appeals and encourages an otherwise eligible convict to immediately admit his liability and save the state the time, effort and expenses to jettison an appeal.”

The resolution was penned by Associate Justice Erlinda P. Uy with all the other associate justices concurring. It said Kintanar “is no longer qualified to apply for nor allowed to avail of the benefits of probation…since his intention to apply was only expressed not only after he had perfected his appeal from the judgement of conviction by the Court in Division, but more so, even after the judgement affirming such conviction was made by the CTA court en banc.”

Kintanar is the husband of Gloria Kintanar, the first tax evader whose conviction was affirmed by the Supreme Court and whose sentence is now final and executory.

Gloria Kintanar’s case was a landmark one because the SC affirmed the CTA’s “willful blindness” doctrine that makes a taxpayer responsible for his tax returns, depriving him the excuse of blaming his accountant for errors in it.

The Kintanars were distributors of the Forever Living Products. Their tax evasion cases stem from substantial discrepancy between their returns and that reported by Forever Living Products. – Rappler.com