It's time for govenrment to look at its own backyard. It's nor only private companies and individuals who have not been cooperaative in the government's drive to increase the revenue.
In 2007, various national government agencies, local government units, and government owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) have been remiss in remitting to hte Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) the taxes they withheld from their employees.
Data from the 2007 annual report of the Commission of audit (COA) show this accounted for a revenue loss totaling to P18.6billiion.
The 2006 COA Annual Audit Report shows that 36 government agencies also failed to remit a total of P2.56 billion in withholding taxes, Pasagui said GOCCs failed to remit P9.8 billion in withholding taxes in the same period.
Among government agencies, the Department of Public Works and Highways accounts for the biggest amount of unremitted wihtholding taxes in 2006 - P796 million, followed by the Department of Education - P303 billion and Department of Agriculture - P201 million.
In the same period, even the Senate and House of Representatives collectively owe the BIR P16 million in withholding taxes. COA itself owes BIR P33 million.
The finance department has always been banging on the doors of BIR to improve its tax collection efficiency. Its collection accounts for about two-third of the government's total revenue.
CPBO director general Rodolfo Vicerra is also calling on the BIR to improve its database to be able to monitor the tax payments of all 29 million employees nationwide.
Vicerra said only about four to five million employees are paying taxes.
- Retrieved on October 08, 2008 as of 6:51 pm at www.abs-cbnnews.com
This is actually no good for our country at all. Truly, the finance department has been putting the responsibility to the BIR for the inefficient tax collection in our country. But somehow, it is partly their responsibility also. It is partly the responsibility of each one of us. I think we all need to pay our taxes and avoid tax evasion. Companies and different government agencies and organization should remit to the BIR what they charge from workers; else it there would be no point of collecting taxes such as the withholding taxes from employees. With the 29 million employees nationwide, I think it is quite hard for the BIR to check if each and every employee is paying proper taxes. That is why I also think that we should be responsible enough to pay taxes since these taxes are actually used to raise revenues for the government. It is upto the government's conscious to properly allocate taxes and budgets.
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I think, new laws should be imposed regarding the collection of taxes. Evading taxes would make our country poorer since the government won't have any budget for their expenditures. We should all be responsible in paying our taxes. Let's all be honest citizens. After all, if we paid our taxes, we could all benefit from it anyways. If ordinary people evade paying their taxes, what more those big companies who has connections in the government? Our solution: make new laws that would scare these companies to death if they don't pay taxes...-just kidding.
Yes, we all know we have corrupted leaders, but whose fault is it that they are there? OUR own fault, the entire Philippine Population. So, let's not be pessimistic about things, let's all be good girls and boys and pay our taxes accordingly.
It's disappointing that the government offices failed to remit withholding taxes last year. P18.6B could be of great help in budgeting for our projects. how can the citizens follow the rules on paying taxes if the government offices are not doing their duties also. I think the government must be running after the bigger companies when it concerns tax remittances. i believe they could collect bigger sums of money from these big companies compared to those amounts from ordinary citizens. let's just hope that people would be more cooperative on paying taxes for our government to have budget in improving our country.
You know what? I always wonder, how come do these deficits that we annually see on papers and news headlines keep on recurring without having seen someone actually being penalize for the said problem.
I mean, these government agencies, they must have a head or director, or at least an accountant who must be controlling the department's finance committee and should be held liable in cases of imbalances and missing credits such as the alleged P18.6B uncollected withholding taxes. That's their job - to monitor the financial division of that certain agency and therefore in cases like this, they should be held liable.
Since the government does nothing for such uncollected dues, I expect to see the same old headline next year.
How come the government can't seem to collect tax from themselves? That technically should be the easiest tax collection the BIR can do. It simply is collecting tax from themselves.
All civilians pay tax. Even the kid who buys his/her Happy Meal from Mcdo pays tax. Not even the newborn babies are exempt from tax, indirectly of course.
I see this as a problem where SOME people just love to make themselves exceptions from the rule. It is disgusting.
Shame on the government for implementing and violating itself. What a circus!
I just think that one of the reasons why people "tax evade" is because they cannot see where their money is going, and for all we know, it might be in the pockets of the collectors. but yeah, the huge money that the BIR collects doesn't translate to anything visible or useful or something that we can say "is worth paying taxes for". Another reason is that, we know how inefficient our tax system is and how it is being used by someone else's instead of us tax payers? Of course the tax that we pay came from the money that we earned. We would want to visibly see that our money is put into good use and that it will benefit us and other Filipinos.
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