Saturday, March 31, 2007 SC denies Atlas bid on P70M refund
THE Supreme Court (SC) has denied a mining company’s bid for a P70-million tax refund or credit for three tax overpayments it supposedly made in 1992.
In an order written by Associate Justice Renato Corona, the High Tribunal ruled that the company did not even present receipts covering the supposed overpayments when the Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) heard their original case.
“While the CTA is not governed strictly by technical rules of evidence... the presentation of the purchase receipts and/or invoices is not a mere procedural technicality which may be disregarded,” the High Court said.
The management of the Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp. (ACMDC) earlier asked the court for a refund, or at the least a tax credit, claiming that it overpaid the government when it settled its taxes for the second, third and fourth quarters of 1992.
The overpayments, it said, reached P24,031,673 for the second quarter, P16,597,709.17 for the third quarter and P29,839,894.82 for the last quarter.
According to the firm, its sale of gold to the Bangko Sentral ng Pili-pinas, copper concentrates to Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corp. and pyrite to Philippine Phosphate Inc. were “zero-rated transactions resulting in refundable or creditable input taxes under Section 106(b) of the Tax Code of 1986.”
The CTA denied Atlas’ claims on the grounds of prescription and insufficiency of evidence, a move that forced the firm to take its case to the Court of Appeals (CA).
The CA, in turn, reversed on June 29, 2000 the tax court’s ruling on the matter of prescription but affirmed the latter’s decision in all other respects.
Atlas then went to the High Tribunal.
But based on Corona’s decision, Atlas bears the burden of proving the factual bases of its claims and, “by words too plain to be mistaken,” show that they are indeed entitled to the claim.
“The rule, in this case, (requires) petitioner to show that its sales qualified for zero-rating under the laws then in force and present sufficient evidence that those sales resulted in excess input taxes,” it said, adding that Atlas failed to do both.
Both courts, according to the High Tribunal, correctly observed that petitioner never submitted any of the invoices or receipts required by the rules and held this omission to be “fatal to its cause.” (KNR)
