BIR misses January tax collection target

MANILA, Philippines – Tax collections by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) in the first month of the year fell below the agency’s goal by 8.31%.

The country’s largest revenue-generating agency collected P104.15 billion in January, lower than its P113.59-billion target for the month. This was however 9.96% higher than its collections the previous year.

BIR operations generated P99.61 billion revenues, 11.88% higher than the amount recorded in January 2013.

Collections from non-BIR operations, including taxes on government securities, fell 20.13% year-on-year to P4.54 billion.

BIR is hard-pressed to shore up tax collections so the government can further trim down its budget deficit and accelerate spending for vital infrastructure and social services.

To widen its tax base, the agency is working on increasing tax compliance among different groups of taxpayers, such as the self-employed and professionals, through the filing of cases and its weekly Tax Watch ads.

BIR’s latest ads focused on tax-evading doctors.

In 2013, the BIR missed its P1.254 trillion target by 2.95% as it was only able to collect P1.217 trillion.

Nevertheless, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said: “Our revenue collections have been the main driver of economic growth this past year, as led by exceptional efforts by the Bureau of Internal Revenue. 2012 was the first time the BIR hit over P1 trillion in collections and the Bureau has improved on that even more this past year.”

Purisima said the first year of implementation of the sin tax reform law helped push revenues up.

“The first year of implementation has also been largely successful, with incremental excise tax collections at P51.5 billion, exceeding the expected amount by around 50%,” he said.

For 2014, the BIR targets to collect P1.456 trillion. – Rappler.com