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Hefti named new BIR chief


President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has appointed internal revenue officer-in-charge Lilian Hefti as commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). Hefti, a topnotcher of the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) board and bar examinations, was appointed as BIR commissioner after she was appointed as the bureau’s OIC on July 2 replacing former BIR chief Jose Mario Buñag. The new BIR chief is scheduled to take the oath Friday afternoon with Finance Secretary Margarito Teves as guest of honor. Teves has consistently backed the appointment of Hefti who has been serving the BIR for 29 years as she started as an examiner way back in 1979. “The President and I have agreed that we should pick somebody from within to become the BIR Commissioner. And we believe, I believe, that Lilian is the right person for the job and that she should be given a chance to prove it." Teves said during Hefti’s oath taking as OIC and BIR’s 103rd anniversary last July 2. Prior to her appointment as BIR OIC, Hefti served as the agency’s Deputy Commissioner for operations during Buñg’s term. Under Hefti, the BIR outperformed its collection goals for the months of July and August after the agency incurred a huge shortfall in the first half of the year. The agency incurred a collection shortfall of P38.6 billion during the first half of the year after it was only able to collect P334.7 billion versus the target of P373.3 billion. The agency performed better in July after its monthly collection rose 20.1 percent to P58.7 billion compared with P48.9 billion in the same period last year. As of July, the agency’s shortfall stood at P37.3 billion after it collected P393.4 billion versus the P431.1 billion goal. The BIR is tasked to collect P765.9 billion this year or about 17.5 percent higher than last year’s P651.9 billion. About P730.47 billion would come from BIR operations while the rest would come from the withholding tax and documentary stamp tax on government securities as well as travel tax. The national government hopes to trim the budget deficit to P63 billion or 0.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) from an eight-year low of P64.8 billion or one percent of GDP last year. The Arroyo administration is at a tail end of a fiscal consolidation program aimed at ending a decade long era of budget deficits by balancing the budget by next year or two years ahead of the original 2010 schedule under the Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP).- GMANews.TV

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