CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Regional Director Romulo Aguila Jr. said Tuesday that the agency is doubling tax collection measures alongside information and advocacy campaigns on the importance of taxes and tax payments in line with the marching orders of President Benigno Aquino III.
Aguila said that though the BIR office here has been meeting its target goals for the past months, he has instructed his revenue officers to institutionalize revenue campaigns even to involve awareness campaigns.
Aguila said the difficulty of tax collection of BIR can be attributed to some communication problems like inadequate campaigns particularly on the importance of taxpayers paying what is due the government. He also said such information saturation campaign among the taxpayers is crucial during the early part of the year if only to bring right message at the right time to the right people.
"Our information advocacy campaign may allow BIR to attain its collection goals and re-awaken the consciousness of every tax-paying Filipino to give what is due the government,” Aguila said, stressing the BIR will be using media, information drives and forum to facilitate better information dissemination on BIR programs.
Aguila added that in line with the marching orders of President Aquino to step up tax collection, the BIR will soon file tax evasion charges to violators on a regular basis. The BIR is also set on using social networking sites like Facebook in the coming weeks to better allow the public to access BIR services and report tax evaders.
Aguila said that the BIR here is aiming for a P11 billion tax collection for this year. Currently, it has collected some P7.6 billion for the first semester of the year.