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Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Moves on to abolish BIR
By Cheryl Cruz
A SIGNATURE campaign to abolish the "corrupt-ridden" Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has been started and is already gaining ground, an alliance of non-government organizations and academic institutions said Monday.
This developed even as over a hundred delegates from various academic and NGOs gather Tuesday for the Luzon multi-sectoral forum on tax reforms.
Francis Magno, executive director of the La Salle Institute of Governance, said that this was part of their efforts to "completely restructure" the BIR to improve collection efficiency.
Magno is also one of the prime movers of the Transparency and Accountability Network (TAN).
The forum at the Baguio Country Club aims to drum up public support on pending tax reform bills - House Bills 5465 and 5945 and Senate Bill 2463 - which seek to abolish the BIR and create in its place an autonomous national revenue authority with corporate powers and structure, a statement from TAN stated.
These bills were filed after concerned sectors noted that "tax collection in the Philippines has remained inefficient and riddled with corruption for decades, with the tax leakage (or those that are not collected because of inefficient administration and graft and corruption) running to as high as P240-billion a year based on figures from the Department of Finance," it added.
In Monday's press conference, Vincent Lazatin, a member of TAN's executive council, disclosed that since 1997, the government's revenues steadily declined while expenditures also gradually increased, thus resulting to huge budget deficits.
He said that in year 2000, budget deficit was pegged at P134.21-billion, P147-billion in 2001, and P212.7-billion last year and slightly over P200-billion this year.
Lazatin stressed that a huge gap between revenues and expenditures could be greatly reduced not by increasing or imposing new taxes but by enhancing tax collection efficiency, especially since almost 80 percent of the total collection should come from the BIR.
Magno added, "A total overhaul of the BIR as contemplated under the three pending tax administration reform measures in Congress holds the key to better tax collection and lesser graft and corruption."
""Trite as it may seem, it is correct to say that the answer to our budget deficit woes and debt service burden lies in simply collecting taxes right - not increasing our tax rates or imposing new taxes," Magno stressed. "Rather than arguing the wisdom - or lack of it - of having a constituent assembly, Congress should focus on measures that can effectively address the ballooning budget deficit and spur the economy," he said.
Meanwhile, CIBAC party list representative Emmanuel Joel Villanueva vowed to work for getting the support of congressmen for the speedy approval of the measures.
He expressed confidence that the Lower House can muster enough support to ensure the passage of a reconciled version of HB5045 and 5465 before the 2004 elections, particularly since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo already certified these bills a top priority two months ago.
TAN also said that it has already secured some 20,000 signatures nationwide in a determined bid to completely restructure the BIR.
(July 15, 2003 issue)
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