Neri hits back at BIR for 'malicious' tax evasion complaint

Former Social Security System president Romulo Neri has turned the tables on the Bureau of Internal Revenue officials who lodged a tax evasion complaint against him last month. In an eight-page counter-affidavit filed with the Department of Justice on Thursday, Neri said he will file the appropriate criminal charges against his accusers for supposedly maliciously accusing him as a tax cheat. Neri said he will file charges of perjury, malicious prosecution, and violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act against BIR Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares and BIR national investigation division personnel Ma. Lourdes Sante, Angela Marie Simpit, Gertrudes Elito, and Gerry Saga. He said his accusers should be charged "for having obviously ordered the filing of the instant baseless and criminal complaint against me." "The BIR's findings of tax liability against me were based on reckless and unverified assumptions and even malicious imputations that I earned the income for those specific years (2008 and 2009) when the very documentary evidence in their possession prove otherwise," said Neri. Sought for comment, Henares denied that the BIR filed the complaint against Neri in bad faith. "We do not file cases without any legal basis," she said in a phone interview with GMANews.TV. Henares likewise said Neri should not claim that his constitutional right to due process was violated, adding that the mere fact that the DOJ is conducting a preliminary investigation indicates that his right to due process is being respected. "The question is: Is he in jail or not? If he's not in jail, how can he say his due process [has been] violated?" asked Henares. Last November, the BIR filed with the DOJ a complaint against Neri for his supposed failure to declare his full income and to pay the proper amount of income taxes when he sat as board member of Philex Mining Corp. and Unionbank of the Philippines. Neri was able to sit as directors in those publicly listed companies because SSS, the pension fund for private sector employees, owns shares of stock in those companies. The BIR said Neri has a tax deficiency of P9.9 million for 2008, and P18.7 million for 2009. 'Malice and bad faith' But in his counter-affidavit, Neri said: "I vehemently deny the accusation that I had intentionally evaded paying my income taxes... I believe I have honestly reported my income and had thus paid income taxes thereon to the BIR." "The instant charge of tax evasion is utterly wrong, baseless, and precipitate and it even smacks of malice and bad faith on the part of the complaining witnesses and those who had ordered them to file against me," Neri added. The former SSS president said the BIR did not inform him of his supposed tax deficiencies. "It simply issued a letter of authority which was served to me on or about the third week of September 2010 and nothing followed," he said. The next thing Neri knew was that the BIR held a press conference on Nov. 4 where Henares announced the bureau is filing a tax evasion complaint against him. Neri said that on that same day, he went to Henares' office to decry the BIR's move. Neri then claimed that Henares only told him to wait for the DOJ's subpoena. In his counter-affidavit, Neri said the BIR's failure to inform him about an ongoing assessment of his tax duties "is a clear violation of my basic and constitutional right to due process." — RSJ/KBK, GMANews.TV