BIR July collections dip below target

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) missed its July target by as much as P820 million to reach only P73.79 billion, partly due to the lower collections from the Bureau of the Treasury. The July collections brought the revenue figure for the first seven months of 2011 to P531.786 billion, or P3.13 billion lower than the P534.91 billion target set by the agency, the BIR reported on Monday. But despite missing the target, the July collections were higher by 15.6 percent year-on-year. The January to July collections were also P64.5 billion higher than the P467.28 billion year-on-year. Because of this, BIR Commissioner Kim Henares said the BIR is confident it would still hit its P940-billion revenue goal for the year. "The BIR has exceeded its collection of taxes where it has administrative control, but has fallen short in the collection of taxes that the government remits to us," Henares said. The revenue coming from the Treasury Bureau's trading of bills and bonds, Henares said, has fallen short of its P6.28 billion target as of July, resulting in a shortfall in the BIR collections. Tas administration efforts Unfortunately, the BIR chief said, the surplus generated from collecting taxes from income and sales taxes — which totaled about P2.3 billion — was not enough to compensate for the Treasury's missed target. To reach its goal this year, the BIR would continue to ramp up its tax administration efforts, especially in regularly going after tax evaders and filing cases against them before the Department of Justice, Henares said. The Finance Department earlier floated the idea of stricter monitoring of taxes filed by self-employed individuals, citing the P340-billion revenue potential from the sector. In 2010, self-employed individuals remitted only P9.8 billion in taxes. BIR collections account for 70 percent of total government revenues. The Aquino administration earlier said it hopes to contain its budget deficit at about P300 billion this year, or 3.2 percent of the country's economic output, through higher tax collections. —JMT/VS, GMA News