The Bureau of Internal Revenue doubled its revenue collections to P1.92 billion last year from temporarily closing establishments the BIR said violated the National Internal Revenue Code.
The Department of Finance (DOF) said in a statement on Tuesday that BIR’s tax collection under the program it calls “Oplan Kandado” (shutter plan) posted an increase of 140.76 percent year-on-year from P799.47 million in 2018.
Introduced in 2009 through a Revenue Memorandum Order (RMO), “Oplan Kandado” aims not only to maximize the degree of voluntary compliance among taxpayers, but also to deter tax code violations, PriceWaterhouseCoopers Philippines has written in 2018.
The DOF said they were able to close more establishments last year at 743 establishments, equivalent to more than thrice the number of closures it recorded in 2018 at 233.
According to the DOF, the BIR also filed a record-high 347 tax cases involving tax liabilities estimated at P24.02 billion in 2019 before either the Department of Justice (DOJ) or the Court of Tax Appeals (CTA).
BIR Deputy Commissioner Arnel SD. Guballa said this is the first time that the bureau filed this many complaints for tax evasion against various individuals and corporations.
Likewise, under its “Run after Tax Evaders” program, the BIR filed 309 cases before the DOJ last year for preliminary investigation for tax liabilities of various individuals and corporations estimated at P19.06 billion.
Guballa said the amount is a “marked improvement” of 56.85 percent over the 197 cases filed by the BIR in 2018 involving some P15 billion worth of tax liabilities.
He also said the bureau filed 38 cases before the CTA for tax liabilities worth P4.94 billion or more than triple the 12 cases filed before the tax appeals court in 2018.
He said the cases filed before the CTA involving close to P5 billion in tax liabilities represent a 480.67 percent increase over the estimated P851.57 million in taxes that the BIR had hoped to collect in 2018 through litigation.
As of December 31 last year, the BIR has 118 tax-related cases pending before the CTA, Guballa added.
In 2017, the Duterte administration made history by collecting from Mighty Corp. more than P30 billion for non-payment of excise taxes and for use of counterfeit tax stamps—the biggest sum on record raised by the government from a tax settlement with a single corporate taxpayer.
That same amount was quoted by President Duterte that he leveled against businessman Lucio C. Tan Sr. in a speech in Qatar that year. The BIR, however, said there is no pending tax-evasion case against Tan that time.