By Victoria “NIKE” De Dios
The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has reported to the Department of Finance (DOF) that it collected a total of P547.9 million in taxes fr0m January to September this year from 178 commercial establishments that were padlocked earlier for failing to either register or pay the correct amount of taxes.
In a report to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, the BIR said it has also filed 14Â Â cases before the Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) in a bid to collect some P338 million in tax liabilities from various respondents.
Meanwhile, 72 complaints involving an estimated P3.4 billion in tax liabilities that the bureau has filed before the Department of Justice (DOJ)Â Â are now under preliminary investigation, BIR Deputy Commissioner Arnel Guballa reported during a recent DOF Executive Committee (Execom) meeting.
Guballa said the operations conducted against the 178 padlocked establishments were pursuant to Revenue Memorandum Order (RMO) No. 3-2009, otherwise known as the Oplan Kandado Program.
Last year, the BIR collected a total of P1.92 billion under its Oplan Kandado program as a result of the temporary closure of 743 establishments for various violations of the National Internal Revenue Code.
BIR’s performance under the Oplan Kandado program in 2019 was a 218.88-percent improvement over its 233 closures of establishments reported in 2018 and a 140.76-percent increase in collections amounting to P799.47 million during that year.
Also in 2019, the BIR  filed a total of 347 complaints involving tax liabilities estimated to be worth P24.02 billion combined before either the DOJ or CTA  as part of the Duterte administration’s all-out campaign against tax evaders.
Under its Run After Tax Evaders (RATE) program, 309 cases for preliminary investigation were filed by the bureau before the DOJ last year for tax liabilities of various individuals and corporations estimated at P19.06 billion combined.
This was a marked improvement of 56.85 percent over the 197 cases filed by the BIR in 2018 involving some P15 billion-worth of tax liabilities.
In the CTA, the bureau has filed 38 cases for tax liabilities worth P4.94 billion combined, or more than triple the 12 cases filed before the tax appeals court in 2018.
The cases filed before the CTA involving close to P5 billion in tax liabilities represent a 480.67 percent increase over the estimated P851.57 million in taxes that the BIR had hoped to collect in 2018 through litigation.
