THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) was urged by a lawmaker to reveal the “top taxpayers” who are winners of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) lotto games after it sparked controversies about whether the games are being manipulated.
Sen. Raffy Tulfo presided over the Games and Amusement Subcommittee hearing to tackle Senate Resolution No. (SRN) 253 or The Integrity and Trustworthiness of the PCSO Lotto Games and the SRN 466 or the Prize Fund Tax Remitted by the PCSO.
At Monday’s hearing, Tulfo said that similar to the list of Top Taxpayers that the BIR releases, the revenue-generating agency should also disclose the names of the lotto winners who have paid taxes.
Under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, lotto winners of more than P10,000 are subjected to 20-percent tax.
“The public has the right to know if there are lotto winners and if the winners are paying taxes or if the lotto winners are even real winners,” Tulfo stressed, speaking mostly in Filipino.
The senator said that it doesn’t have to be the names of the winners and the amount they won but just to prove that these are the lotto winners who took home hundreds of millions of pesos.
“[The] multiple winners [who won] amounting to millions, are they paying taxes? So that the public will know that all of the winners of huge amount of prizes in PCSO are paying taxes,” Tulfo went on.
Ralbert Tibayan of the Legal and Legislative Division of the BIR said that all records that are filed with the bureau are bound by Section 270 of the National Internal Revenue Code or the Tax Code.
Tibayan said the BIR is ready to conduct an executive session and that they already have the documents requested.
“There are multiple wins for the year 2023, so we summarized it. We also discovered something so we are ready to submit those in an executive session,” the BIR official said in a mix of English and Filipino.
When asked by Tulfo about his opinion on divulging the names of lotto winners who paid their taxes, Tibayan said that if it is a policy, then the BIR will enforce it.
Tulfo responded that according to his lawyers, there is no law that states PCSO winners cannot be revealed.
“Pag-aralan namin [We’ll study], Mr. Chair, on how we’ll go about that,” Tibayan said.
Last week, the PCSO denied Tulfo’s allegations that a single bettor won 20 times in lotto games, saying that the reported prize claims are made by one person from the agency’s digit games that only have minor prizes.
“For Digit Games such as 2D, 3D, 4D, and 6D, PCSO lotto outlet agents or representatives of the winners can collect the winnings on their behalf. Since they are just minor prizes, a winner can ask someone he trusts to claim the prize for him/her through the so-called ‘paki-claim,’” the PCSO clarified.