This year’s Philippine Startup Week ended with one of the those ground-breaking events where tech and tax experts collaborated for a night of innovation talks called “Inclusion Fusion – Innovation x Impact Night.” The event brought together some of the country’s innovative minds to talk about Hack-A-Tax Philippines, aninnovation challenge to improve tax services, headed by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and co-organized by Developers Connect Philippines (DEVCON).
BIR Commissioner Caesar Dulay’s keynote speech highlighted the pain points that taxpayers, most especially the micro and small and medium enterprises (MSEs), experience when registering for tax services. “Hack-A-tax is a way of making paying taxes inclusive by leveraging technology,” as cited in Commissioner Dulay’s speech delivered by Atty. Lanee Cui-David, BIR Deputy Commissioner of the Information System Group.
During the first panel discussion, BIR Deputy Commissioner Atty. Lanee Cui-David noted that improving registration, filing, and payment processes are the main focus of the BIR when it comes to digital transformation. Executive Vice President of the UnionBank of the Philippines, John Cary Ong, added that every single taxable document like purchase orders, official receipts, and withholding tax certificates should be digitized as well. To add, Raymond Abrea, the Founding Chairman of Asian Consulting Group (ACG), shared that the Philippines is actually “ahead” in terms of conceptualizing how processing taxes can become simpler for the Filipino community.
Lightning talks featured Hack-A-Tax innovation partners Microsoft Philippines and GCash. “There is a huge discrepancy in the Philippines in terms of financial inclusion, yet the country is ready for financial inclusion through technology,” said Ferdie Perez,GCash AVP for In-app Payments.
In the second panel discussion, industry leaders tackled challenges concerning financial inclusion. Jingle Perreras, the Vice Chairman and Management Senior Advisor of the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD) opened the discussion by citing that manual bank transactions can also be intimidating. “Majority of our clients are graduates of primary schools, and they are intimidated by going to a bank. We decided that going digital helps address this.We have partnered with ASENSO in order to reach out to more of our marginalized brothers and sisters in the community.”
ASENSO’s Chief Technology Officer, Miguel Cabral, noted how difficult it was for him and his team to work with mothers during product developments, thus requiring the shifting of ideas thatwould cater better to their target clients. PayMaya, one of Hack-A-Tax innovation partners and panelists, offered a sound solution: “When you create a product, make sure it has value. Everyone should benefit from it, and not just one specific group in the Philippine community,” said Marvin Santos, the Head of Government Sector for PayMaya. “While customer education should be considered in product development, the real challenge is how the customer can experience the product with ease.”
“Inclusion Fusion – Innovation x Impact Night,” co-organized by Talino Venture Labs, ended with a Q&A segment to address questions on Hack-A-Tax led by BIR Deputy Commissioner Atty. Lanee Cui-David, Raymond Abrea of ACG, Winston Damarillo (Founder, DEVCON & CEO, Talino Venture Labs) and Jerome Locson of USAID, E-PESO.
Hacka-A-Tax Philippines invites individual developers, IT students and professionals to produce the best software that will enable a more convenient and favorable process for taxpayers to complete their tasks at BIR, which include tax registration, TIN application, tax filing and payments, among others. The competition was launched last October 15, 2019 with a month-long submission period for tax solution proposals and entries. However, due to the volume of requests and increase in the number of participants, submission deadline for Hack-A-Tax challenge has been moved to November 30, 2019 at 11:59 p.m. More details and mechanics regarding Hack-A-Tax can be found on its official website www.hackatax.ph. For inquiries, email info@hackatax.ph.