MANILA: Finance Secretary, Cesar Purisima, has praised the efforts of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) in making electronic filing and payment mandatory for selected taxpayers.
Purisima confirmed that the BIR aims to “increase dramatically” the number of taxpayers using e-filing, both to ease their tax return filing experience and to encourage more people to pay their taxes.
“E-filing and e-payment are critical to the success of any modern tax administration,” he added. “In this way, paying taxes will be truly as easy as RFP – register, file, and pay. Through e-filing and e-payment, more people can contribute to building the nation through proper tax contributions.”
It was noted that the Finance Department and BIR have taken systemic steps to include e-filing and e-payment in the performance evaluation of BIR Revenue District Offices and Revenue Regions, and that BIR Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares recently reminded selected taxpayers that they are mandated to enroll, file returns, and pay taxes early using the BIR Electronic Filing and Payment (eFPS) System or electronic BIR Forms (eBIRforms).
eFPS is mandatory for taxpayers included in the Taxpayer Account Management Program, being those who have been identified by the BIR’s District Offices as accounting for at least 80 percent of the tax collected in their areas; accredited importers; national government agencies; enterprises enjoying tax incentives, such as those from the Board of Investment; the top 5,000 individual taxpayers; and companies with paid-up capital of PHP10m (USD226,000) or more.
In addition, from September 1 last year, it also became mandatory for non-eFPS filers and certain other taxpayers to use eBIRforms in the preparation and filing of 36 BIR Forms, including for income tax, excise duties, value added tax, withholding tax, and documentary stamp duty.
