Recto urges oil firms to pay correct taxes this year

Oil companies failed to properly pay taxes in 2009 and will do so again this year, Sen. Ralph Recto said Sunday. Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) data showed that the oil industry paid P17.128 billion in government taxes in 2009 after posting a staggering income of P453.692 billion, Recto said in a statement. The senator said that the oil companies will also “underpay" their taxes this year, as their tax returns indicated that they only paid P9.865 billion in the first eight months of the year on a gross income of P388.492 billion. The taxes oil firms paid in January-August should be higher than P9.865 billion as “prices of petroleum products have never looked back since the global rise in crude prices happened a few years ago," Recto said. “As petroleum sales soar and translate to profits, oil industry’s tax contribution seems to be steadily shrinking," said Recto, chairman of the Senate ways and means committee. With taxes for September-December still to be accounted for, the oil industry even appears “helpless" in duplicating or even surpassing its tax payment in 2009, Recto said. “The helpless Filipino public has cursed and tolerated their weekly oil price hikes and their padded pump prices. The least that they can do is pay a decent amount of tax just like what ordinary Filipinos do," the senator added. — JE/VS, GMANews.TV