City V-Mayor Jose Antonio Veloso will have his hands full when the city council books for discussion a tax payment amounting to P74 million which according to reports was “lost in transit” during the administration of former mayor Dan Neri Lim. The same reports said the former Lim's administration has repeatedly declined to accept tax payments from business firms in Tagbilaran, the amount of which has ballooned to P74 million during two fiscal years alone, 2012 and 2013, prompting City Mayor Baba Yap to ask authority from the Sangguniang Panlungsod to grant compromise tax liability to city taxpayers. City Hall's discovery of unremitted taxes rings similar to the woes buffeting the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) national office who has failed to collect some P300 billion taxes nationwide. According to a report of the City Treasurer Office, “delinquent business taxpayers for 2012 have an unremitted taxes amounting to P34,475,611.01, while (unremitted taxes) for 2013 have reached P39,506,999.23.”

City Administrator Leonides Borja wrote V-Mayor Veloso about the tax discrepancy. “It was the practice of the previous administration to refuse payments of taxes from businesses,” said City Administrator Borja, “that's why the amount of uncollected tax payments has grown so huge.” Borja said the discovery of the unremitted tax payments has shocked the current administration which has compelled the city mayor to devise a compromise agreement that would encourage taxpayers to fulfill their obligations. But Borja clarified that the business taxpayers cannot be blamed in this case since they were actually willing to pay taxes – only that business owners were allegedly stopped by ex-mayor Lim to hand over the payment. The trick, Borja revealed, was that it's either Lim or one of his “allies” such as Mark Monton who would allegedly do the “backdoor collecting” of money from city businesses.

“At first, business owners thought they were able to save money, with their tax payments being not accepted but later on they realized they were wrong because cash money was being borrowed or asked from them by the administration of Dan Lim,” Borja said. In a letter to the SP and also addressed to City Vice-Mayor Jose Antonio “Toto” Veloso, Borja said that “in pursuit of a United Tagbilaran, strategic initiatives have to be laid down to recoup the people's trust and confidence in local governance.” “To this end, may we request the Sangguniang Panlungsod to pass a resolution authorizing the (City Mayor) to grant compromise tax liability to city taxpayers under certain circumstances; this privilege would certainly benefit those business taxpayers to fulfill their tax obligations,” Borja said in his letter. He said that the P74 million unremitted tax payments “would surely translate to increased revenues if proper interventions would be launched.”

PROPOSE RESOLUTION

Proposed Resolution No. 188-13, authored by City Councilor Bebiano M. Inting, disclosed that the “City Government of Tagbilaran has accumulated a huge tax collectible book.” “The City Treasurer's Office has yet to determine the cause of this huge tax collectible,” the Resolution said. Inting suspected that the unusually huge unremitted tax collections might have been triggered by “excessive and unjust assessment by the City Government; doubtful validity of the tax assessment; financial position of the taxpayers demonstrates a clear inability of the taxpayers to pay tax; administrative and collection costs exceeds the amount to be collected; and refusal of the City Government to accept.” The cause of the refusal to accept tax payments by the previous administration was not expounded in the resolution authored by Inting. Inting believes that once the city mayor is authorized by the SP to compromise accumulated tax liabilities, “collection of this uncollected taxes could greatly boost the City's Treasury especially in this time of calamity.”

UNCOLLECTED BY BIR

In Manila, BIR Head Kim Henares has lamented that her agency failed to collect some P300 billion of taxes nationwide. “The balance of delinquent accounts [of the BIR] increased by 188 percent in 2012 from that of 2011, from P103.757 billion to P298.981 billion, although the monitoring of delinquent accounts was one of the bureau's priority thrusts for the year, thus adversely affecting its collection efficiency,” according to a Commission on Audit (COA) report. Henares said the uncollected amount dated back even before the start of the administration of Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino. “This is a result of our cleaning up and improvement of the record-keeping of our delinquent accounts. These are old, delinquent and dishonored checks (more than five years old) that were not reported and/or properly recorded. That is why for the past weeks we have been filing criminal cases against taxpayers for failure to pay delinquent accounts,” Henares said. (with reports from the Philippine Daily Inquirer)