Tuesday, May 22, 2007 Tax notes: New paradigm in tax collection
IN Revenue Memorandum Circular 32-2007, the Bureau of Internal Revenue has issued guidelines and procedures to be strictly observed by revenue officers in their tax enforcement activities.
These guidelines, which are pursuant to the new paradigm mandated by the Secretary of Finance towards meeting their annual collection target, include among others, the following:
a. All claims for exemption, cash refunds and issuance of tax credit certificates must be strictly evaluated. Any doubt must be resolved in favor of the government;
b. Delegated authorities to the Regional Directors and Assistant Commissioners to sign rulings involving grant of exemption shall be transferred to the Assistant Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner, respectively;
c. All protests on Preliminary Assessment Notice/Final Assessment Notice not containing substantial issues shall be summarily denied without any prolonged discussion and brought to the payment stage, unless the taxpayer elects to go to court;
d. Tax mapping operations and third party information mining should be intensified to add new taxpayers to the rolls and enhance voluntary compliance;
e. Businesses, which are apparently earning more revenues this year, such as hotels and other tourism-related establishments, stockbrokers, lessors/lessees and sellers/dealers/buyers/brokers of real properties, mining companies, TV stations, advertising companies, recruitment agencies, hospitals, clinics, medical and dental laboratories, business agents and their clients reporting no payment returns, professionals like doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc., government contractors, duly identified top 10,000 private corporations, and taxpayers reporting exempt, net loss/no operations in their filed returns shall be prioritized for audit;
f. Expedite the generation of discrepancy report of sales and purchases reported by taxpayers through their Summary Lists of Sales and Purchases;
g. The stocktaking and surveillance activities on business establishments shall be intensified;
h. Taxpayers shall be enjoined to avail of the Improved Voluntary Assessment Program and the one-time administrative abatement. (Source: Punongbayan & Araullo)
