Tell it to SunStar: Run after the president, make him pay taxes

The Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law (Carmma) reminds the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to run after the President, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., in its campaign to go after tax evaders this tax-filing season.

It is high time that the President and his family pay for their estate tax deficiencies. If the BIR is truly serious in going after big-time tax evaders, it should implement the final judgment of the Supreme Court on the Marcos estate.

Carmma is renewing this call it has raised previously as the BIR filed criminal complaints on Friday, Feb. 3, 2023 against 53 individual and corporate taxpayers for tax evasion, with a total of P3.57 billion.

The amount of P3.57 billion is a lot smaller compared with the P203 billion that the Marcoses continue to deny and ignore. Yet, with the Marcoses’ tax deficiencies alone, the BIR would have reached their targets. The revenue agency does not even have to go to court, it just has to implement a final decision of the Supreme Court.

All the more that the people should demand that the BIR fulfill their mandate, and their obligation to the people, even if the BIR chief is a Marcos Jr. appointee.

(BIR chief Romeo Lumagui Jr. was a member of the President’s policy team during the election campaign, a former member of the first lady’s law firm, and also a wedding inaanak of the President.)

Carmma strongly reminds the BIR that its commitment is with the people and this is its biggest chance to prove that the agency shall not spare a single tax evader from paying his/her fair share of taxes.

We call on the BIR to show in deeds that its accountability is with the people, not with a family of proven tax evaders who have returned back to power.