BIR seen to exceed target

The Bureau of Internal Revenue’s tax collections for the year is expected to exceed its P1.239 trillion target by more than P7 billion, this according to a study published by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies. In a report titled, "Analysis of the President’s Budget for 2013: Making Health Spending Inclusive,” PIDS Senior Research Fellow Rosario Manasan said that she expects the top revenue-generating agency to collect taxes amounting to P1.246 trillion for the entire year. "This higher projection is based on the assumption that BIR is able to improve its tax effort by another 0.4 percentage point of GDP in 2013 in the same manner it did in 2011 and 2012,” Manasan said. "It also takes into account the passage of the amendments to the excise tax law on sin products that is expected to yield an additional revenue of P34 billion in 2013,” she added. President Benigno Aquino III signed Republic Act 10351 or An Act Restructuring the Excise Tax on Alcohol and Tobacco Products into law in December 2012, which was immediately implemented at the start of this year. The law imposes a two-tier excise tax rate on cigarettes and fermented liquor from 2013 to 2016 before imposing a uniform rate in 2017. The Department of Finance earlier said that it is on track to meeting the excise tax collection target for the year. In the first three quarters of 2013, excise tax collections on cigarette and alcohol products grew by 63.9 percent to P63.6 billion. Meanwhile, Manasan estimates that the Bureau of Customs’ collections for the year will be lower than program by P59.4 billion. According to the PIDS report, the BOC will be able to collect P338 billion, which is below the target of P397 billion for the entire year. "The performance of the BOC remains lethargic to date under the Aquino II administration. BOC tax effort declined from 2.9 percent of GDP in 2010 to 2.7 percent of GDP in 2011 and 2012,” Manasan said. "Although BOC effort posted a small recovery in the first semester of 2012, this improvement was not sustained in the second semester,” she added. The BOC has long been missing its monthly revenue targets, which Customs Commissioner Rufino Biazon attributes to the country’s participation in free trade agreements (FTAs), among others study looked into the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) Household Profile Survey for Pasay City, Metro Manila. -