ONLINE payment transactions with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) grew to 4.6 million as of end-October this year, even surpassing the number of transactions for the whole of 2020.
Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez said more taxpayers have been using digital tools to pay their taxes with the BIR.
“From the 1.9 million electronic payment transactions made with the Bureau in 2015, this number rose to 4.0 million in 2020, representing an increase of 110 percent. Electronic payment transactions in the first ten months of 2021 even grew to 4.6 million,” the finance chief said in his keynote speech on Friday during the launch of BIR’s digitalization campaign initiative Taxpayer FIRST (Fast, Innovative, Reliable, Secure, Technology-Driven).
Dominguez also said almost 100 percent of the total number of income tax returns were also filed electronically this year, even higher than the last year’s 90 percent.
“This is a major breakthrough given the fact that only 10 percent of the country’s taxpayers made use of digital tools to file their income taxes in 2015 before our administration took over,” Dominguez said. He attributed this feat to the early digital transformation undertaken by the BIR.
“Our decision to digitalize government processes early on helped us respond to the difficulties presented by the global health emergency. The pandemic forced the government to scale up spending to protect lives and preserve the health of our people,” Dominguez said.
Aside from the BIR, he also acknowledged the digitalization efforts of the Bureau of Customs (BOC), which prompted ports to continue to facilitate trade even amid the pandemic.
Dominguez reiterated that the combined tax collections of BIR and BOC were already 9 percent higher than the same period of last year’s level, and they have been exactly as projected.
“The reliability of revenue in the first 10 months of 2021, the combined tax collections of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs were already 9 percent higher than the same period of last year’s level, and they have been exactly as projected,” he said.
Dominguez added: “The reliability of revenue flows enabled the government to fight the pandemic with confidence. Those revenues helped fund our social alleviation measures to protect the most vulnerable communities, supported our health
response and economic stimulus measures, and provided financing for our economic investments for our people. All these were made possible by early transitioning to digital processes.”