CITY OF SAN FERNANDO — The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Revenue Region 4 (RR4) is set to launch its “Taxpayer Tokhang” mimicking the Philippine National Police’s “Oplan Tokhang.”
BIR regional director Jethro Sabarriaga was quick to clarify that such campaign will not be bloody since those who will show resistance will be meted with the full force of the law following tax compliance verification procedures.
The BIR will be looking on the tax records of professionals like doctors, accountants, lawyers and other professionals if they have been filing the right taxes for the past years and if their filing returns or their records have gross mismatch with their perceived economic activity.
“We will be issuing gentle reminders by conducting a tax compliance verification drive and talking to them and determine the administrative penalties,” Sabarriaga said, adding that the BIR will publish the names of those who will not comply so that local governments will also know who are not paying their taxes.
Sabarriaga said that this will enable them to entice people and local governments to give information on these people so that they will be filed proper cases. The Oplan Kandado program will also be part of this new initiative.
The BIR RR4 has ordered a massive surveillance of entertainment establishments in Angeles City. It has come to the attention of RR4 that several establishments are not complying with tax requirement.
Sabarriaga said that the BIR will not be taking the negative concept on “tokhang.”
Sabarriaga said that the program will also include the general program of the region on benchmarking the acceptable performance of certain industries. This will be determined by the records of the taxpayers and their particular location. This means that that there will be benchmarks for different areas in RR4.
Sabarriaga said that the benchmarking will give a glimpse of the picture of who are the compliant tax payers. He added that the standards are dynamic and will be based on the audits.