BIR warns businessmen against tax evasion
CALASIAO–Pay up or be padlocked.
This was the strong warning issued by Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Sixto Esquivias IV to businessmen when it launched Oplan Kandado program, which aims to close down establishments found to be declaring and paying incorrect taxes.
“It’s about time the BIR shows to taxpayers that this time the BIR has the capability to detect their efforts to cheat the government of the rightful amount of tax due to it, that if we find them cheating, we will not hesitate to close their establishments,” Esquivias said on Friday during the inauguration of the Revenue Data Center-Luzon Building for regions 1, 2, 3, 4 and Cordillera Administrative Region
Esquivias said there are three grounds under section 115 of the Tax Code which empowers the commissioner to go and suspend the operations of the taxpayer.
These are: failure to use sales invoices or receipts; failure to file Value Added Tax (VAT) compliance return; and understating sales or receipts by more than 30 percent.
Esquivias said understatement or under-declaration of taxes could be detected through BIR’s programs such as the third party information program through which sources provide the agency with leads.
“All we have to do is compare these information we received with their own tax declarations,” he said. “We will be conducting surveillance and monitoring activities,” he added.
At the same time, he assured businessmen that due process will be observed in implementing Oplan Kandado.
Esquivias, who rose from the ranks in the BIR, also warned the agency’s employees against corruption.
He warned that he knows what everybody in the agency is doing “so they should not think even for a minute that I don’t understand what they are doing”.
The BIR is targeting to collect more than P910 billion in taxes this year but Esquivias said the number might have to be adjusted in consideration of the current financial crisis. #
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