FINANCE Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III has expressed confidence that Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) would exceed its P2.081-trillion target this year as the government needed more revenues this year to cover the expected higher budget deficit.
Dominguez said this feat would be possible this year as the agency continues to ramp up its digitalization efforts.
“With digitalization in improved administrative systems, and the dedication of the men and women of the Bureau, I have no doubt that the target will not just be met, but will be exceeded,” Dominguez said in his speech during BIR’s 2021 National Tax Campaign Kick-Off on Wednesday.
BIR’s target for this year is 23.5 percent higher than its P1.685-trillion downscaled target last year.
In the same speech, Dominguez said the “country needs to collect as much revenue as possible to defeat the pandemic and support public investments to help our economy recover.”
The government is hoping to raise more revenues this year to cover the expected higher budget deficit at P1.78 trillion or 8.9 percent of the country’s GDP.
The government has yet to officially release the full-year budget deficit figure for 2020, but Dominguez earlier said the “emerging” budget last year was at P1.36 trillion or 7.5 percent of the government’s projected GDP. Should this be realized, this is record-high and more than double the country’s budget deficit in 2019, which only stood at 3.4 percent of GDP or P660.2 billion.
State revenues were down last year because of the pandemic-induced economic lockdown but Dominguez said BIR still managed to surpass its target last year by taking advantage of digital reforms.
The government’s main revenue agency collected P1.94 trillion last year, of which 85 percent or P1.66 trillion was coursed through electronic channels.
Dominguez also said “almost 100 percent” of the tax returns filed was done online last year.
“The Bureau of Internal Revenue would not have posted such praiseworthy performance, without the heroic operations of our taxpayers, especially our large taxpayers who are present here today. Our diligent taxpayers make the great task of collecting revenues much lighter,” he said.
On Tuesday, the Philippines signed a US$809,450 grant agreement (about P38.85 million) with the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) that will support BIR’s Information Communication Technology (ICT) Modernization Strategy and Data Center to boost its collection efficiency.
The US grant also aims to assist the BIR in undertaking an in-depth technical assessment of its current ICT environment, developing an Enterprise Architecture roadmap/framework, and assessing the organizational framework of its Information System Group (ISG), including recommended restructuring and training programs.
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