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Govt to file charges vs suspected smuggler Thursday


The Bureau of Customs (BOC) is set to file charges against a suspected big-time smuggler this week, but Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima has refused to identify the businessman. "I don’t want to share something until it’s final," Purisima said in an ambush interview Monday. "Wait on Thursday. There’s definitely going to be a case. [BOC] has told me the nature of the case of this person," he added. BOC is an attached agency of the Department of Finance (DOF), which is now bent on going after big-time tax evaders as part of the government’s efforts to improve tax collection. The government had earlier filed a tax-evasion case against pawnshop owner William Villarica, who the government said paid only P25,600 in income tax between 1998 and 2009. In his speech during the 106th Anniversary of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Monday, President Benigno Aquino III reiterated the importance of his administration’s RATE — Run After Tax Evaders — program. Aquino said the RATE program will shore up shaky revenues and cut the budget deficit by cracking down on corruption and enforcing tax collection laws. He said his administration is targeting to increase the tax-ratio effort from the current 13 percent to 15 percent. He noted that during the Ramos administration, the government reached the tax-ratio effort to 17 percent. Tax ratio is the proportion of actual tax share to the predicted or potential tax share. "Magtulungan tayo upang maitaas man lang natin ang kasalukuyang labintatlong porsyento sa labinlimang porsyento bago matapos ang aking panunungkulan," Aquino told BIR employees. (Let’s help each other so that we can increase our tax ratio effort from 13 percent to 15 percent before my term ends.) “Kung nagawa niyo na ito noon, magagawa niyo ulit ito ngayon (You’ve done this before already, and you can do it again today)," he added. Aquino also said he hopes the BIR would meet its P860-billion full-year target revenue. - Jesse Edep/KBK/RSJ, GMANews.TV

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