The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is looking into the possibility of work-from-home jobs linked to the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO) businesses after the agency discovered numerous quantities of laptops during a raid on Thursday.
The BIR has padlocked two POGO establishments in Pasay and Parañaque City due to the firms’ failure to pay taxes with an estimated worth of P100 million.
Officials said that the businesses are registered with BIR as “Altech Innovations Business Outsourcing” under the name of a single person.
In an interview, BIR Deputy Commissioner Arnel Guballa said the agency will conduct a research in case it sees more POGO branches full of laptops, rather than the usual desktop computer setups. “We will of course look into it and study the possibility…[of work-from-home POGO businesses] if we see more firms that also use laptops,” Guballa said.
He added that the team will track down POGO firms regardless of location. “Some tax payers are hard to tax, we spent a lot of our time and deployed our intelligence units to track them,” Guballa said.
The BIR expects positive results on POGOs’ voluntary tax compliance. “Yes we are expecting an increase in compliance because of our recent enforcement activities. We want to tell these service providers that in this country, you must always comply with the law,” he said.
Finance Assistant Secretary Tony Lambino is keen on reminding foreign nationals to pay their taxes. “[Finance] Secretary Dominguez said that there should be an equal implementation of the law. It isn’t fair for Filipino tax payers who duly pay their taxes monthly, while[some] foreign nationals [don’t]…. It’s only a matter of fair implementation of the law, it’s making sure that everyone is complying with their duties and responsibilities,” Lambino said.
There are at least 60 POGO firms licensed by Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. However, the regulator has suspended accepting applications for new licenses until the issues plaguing the industry are addressed.