ALMOST all tax returns in the Philippines for 2020 were filed online after the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) ramped up its digitization initiatives.
In a report, the BIR said 1.43 million or 99.5 percent of all tax returns were filed online and only 7,139 were filed manually.
BIR said the annual income tax returns (AITRs) were filed online through its electronic filing and payment system (eFPS) and electronic BIR forms (eBIRforms) system.
“We are starting to reap the benefits of our continued digitization efforts that aim to make tax compliance easier, more accessible and more convenient for the public,” BIR Deputy Commissioner Arnel SD Guballa was quoted in the report as saying.
Guballa said the AITRs filed online this year represented a 1,465-percent increase from the 10 percent of AITRs filed online in 2015.
When the Duterte administration took office, the number of e-filed returns steadily increased to 672,820 or 51.84 percent of the total AITRs filed in 2017 and 878,908 or 58.25 percent in 2018.
The number of e-filed AITRs rose sharply to 1,281,731 or 80.4 percent of the total AITRs filed in 2019, and to 1,314,672 or 90 percent in 2020, Guballa said in his report during a recent executive committee (Execom) meeting of the Department of Finance (DOF).
In 2020, Guballa said BIR collections through the additional electronic payment channels implemented by the Duterte administration starting in 2017 amounted to P4.98 billion from 1.16 million transactions.
Guballa also reported that from the 1.91 million electronic payment transactions made with the BIR in 2015, this number rose to 4.01 million electronic payment transactions in 2020, representing an increase of 110 percent.
“This is already P3.765 billion higher when compared to the collections made by the Bureau through these additional electronic payment channels at P1.22 billion in 2019 from 449,849 transactions,” he said.
Electronic tax payments
GUBALLA said the revenue collections of the BIR through electronic channels accounted for P1.66 trillion or 85 percent of its total collection for 2020.
This was P51 billion or 44 percent higher than the P1.15 trillion collected by the Bureau through e-channels in 2015.
This year, preliminary data showed BIR collections through e-channels amounted to P573 billion, which represents 83 percent of the total collection of P689 billion as of April 30.
The number of e-payers, or the taxpayers who paid their internal revenue taxes through the eFPS, Electronic Fund Transfer Instructions System (eFTIS), and other e-payment channels implemented by the BIR, totaled 496,590 as of April 30 this year.
Guballa said this represents an increase of 535 percent or 418,472, based on preliminary data when compared to the 78,118 ePayers in 2015.
He said the number of e-payers increased dramatically from 4 percent in 2015 to 12 percent in 2017 as a result of the successful implementation by the BIR of the electronic payments channels GCash, Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank) ePayment System and the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) PayTax online system.
Additional e-payment channels launched starting in 2019 include the Union Bank of the Philippines (UBP) Online, PesoNet and Paymaya, Guballa said.
The number of e-payers went down to 7 percent in 2018 because of the initial unavailability of several tax forms online as the BIR had to adjust them to conform to the implementation of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (Train) Law, Guballa said.
“Nonetheless, this has already been addressed in the succeeding years, with e-payers accounting for 17 percent of the total number of taxpayers in 2020. Preliminary data also show that from January 1 to April 30, e-payers accounted for 24 percent of the total number of taxpayers,” he added.
Dominguez commended the BIR for ensuring the smooth and glitch-free electronic filing and payment of ITRs this year, which encouraged more taxpayers to fulfill their civic duty of paying taxes even amid the mobility restrictions imposed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Even before the outbreak of the pandemic, Dominguez had pressed the BIR and the Bureau of Customs to fast-track their digital switch as a way to boost online transactions and improve the ease of doing business in the country’s top two revenue-generation agencies.