THE new leadership of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) vowed on Tuesday to do everything possible to narrow the agency’s collection shortfall for the rest of the year, while assuring stakeholders it will continue to pursue reforms started under Sixto Esquivias IV, who resigned on Friday.

Senior Deputy Commissioner Joel Tan-Torres, named by President Arroyo as BIR officer in charge on Tuesday, said that although it will be difficult to achieve the collection targets set earlier, they will still try to close the gap by having several “high-profile” programs in the coming months as the Christmas season sets in.

No figures were given, but Tan-Torres said they will focus on the temporary bazaars and retail establishments that will be set up during the season and will ask establishments to issue receipts.

“We will also be busy trying to plug the loopholes in certain tax -incentive measures,” Tan-Torres said, referring to the Personal Equity and Retirement Account Law and Tourism Development Act, among others.

“With all these, we hope that we can put to a stop to the [trend] of not meeting our monthly collection target….Even though we will not able to meet the target of P798.5 billion, it should be understood that there are a lot of mitigating factors on why these will not be attained,” he added.

At the same time, Tan-Torres said the various reform programs already started in Esquivias’s tenure will continue, such as the Oplan Kandado program, or the closure of shops found to be understating their sales; the reshuffle of BIR personnel based on the key performance indicators; and the monitoring of previous business dealings of various firms through third-party information.

Tan-Torres also said that will make sure the Presidential Adviser for Revenue Enhancement (PARE) will not go beyond its oversight functions on the Large Taxpayer Service (LTS), or the agency will not examine the books of the firms themselves without BIR’s permission.

BIR former head Esquivias was on the hot seat last month amid pressure to turn over the LTS, where 60 percent of BIR’s revenues come from, to PARE.

Tan-Torres replaced Esquivias, who resigned on Friday after the agency has been missing its collection targets since he assumed office late last year. Malacañang is said to be looking for a permanent replacement.

Tan-Torres admitted that he personally hand-carried the resignation letter to Finance Secretary Margarito Teves.

Tan-Torres was appointed by Malacañang in August after the issuance of Executive Order 827 creating his post.

BIR, where two-thirds of the revenues of the national government comes from, is already sure that it will not attain its P798.5-billion collection goal for the year as its shortfall for the nine-month period ending September already hit P39 billion.

That shortfall is also expected to widen further toward the end of the year after BIR has allowed companies to claim for a reduction in their income tax payments as a result of severe losses during recent typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng.

“We still do not know how companies will act on it and we do not have estimates yet, but we will monitor their filings,” Tan-Torres said. (With M. Gonzalez)