Mikey Arroyo cries political persecution

POLITICAL persecution, plain and simple.

This was the rant of former presidential son and current Ang Galing Pinoy (AGP) party-list Representative Juan Miguel "Mikey" Arroyo on Thursday after attending a hearing of a tax evasion case filed against him at the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The case, which accused him and his wife, Angela, of failing to pay P73.5 million in taxes is "political persecution" and should be dismissed, he told reporters.

"I am confident that the case against me will, in time, be dismissed as this is borne, not by a genuine pursuit for justice, but by a continuing persecution of my family," Arroyo said.

He added that a "demolition job" against his family has "intensified of late to mask this administration's puny performance in governance and lack in achievement."

But at the same time, Arroyo asked President Benigno Aquino III to instruct his officials to stop political persecution. This was the only way his administration could show that it is prepared to move forward and forget about political rivalry.

"The Filipino people are, however, growing tired of this politics of hate being carried out unabashedly by the current dispensation. I would like to remind our leaders to be mindful that their first and foremost responsibility is alleviating the plight of the people," said Arroyo.

During the hearing on Thursday, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) maintained that the former presidential son and his wife violated sections 254 and 255 of the National Internal Revenue Code.

Both allegedly only paid the internal revenue bureau P2.4 million, P1.7 million, and P376,000 in taxes for the years 2004, 2006, and 2007, respectively, when he and his wife bought several properties worth millions from 2004 to 2009, including residential houses in the US, in Lubao, Pampanga and in La Vista Subdivision in Quezon City.

However, the respondents reiterated that the bureau erred in computing the taxes they had paid in those four years.

Arroyo's counsel, lawyer Ruy Rondain, said income tax returns (ITRs) on the years specified in the BIR complaint were covered by "substituted filing (of ITR) by Congress."

In asking the DOJ to junk the complaint, the couple further alleged that the BIR "used a simplistic and general approach of comparing certain information derived from our SALN (Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth) and income tax returns to determine our alleged unreported income."

"The BIR did not determine any specific transaction or income that we may have earned but did not report for tax purposes. Likewise, the BIR did not question the veracity of the items (assets and liabilities) listed in the SALN that we filed and they in fact used these in determining our alleged tax liabilities," they argued.

Rondain also explained that the BIR merely computed the net worth using the asset and liability information in the Arroyo's SALN, calculated the increase in net worth for each year from 2004 to 2009, and determined the unreported income by comparing the increase in net worth with the taxable income reported in the tax return.

"Applying the same general approach that the BIR used in their Net Worth Method computation and taking into account the items mentioned above, we can show that there would not be any resulting unreported income," he claimed. (AMN/Sunnex)