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Philippines: E-payments account for 77% of BIR’s H1 collections
MANILA, Philippines — Most taxpayers settled their tax obligations online in the first six and a half months of the year due to the movement restrictions to limit the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Department of Finance (DOF).
Citing preliminary data from the BIR, the DOF said the bulk or 77 percent of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR)’s total tax collections from Jan. 1 to June 15 came from electronic channels.
The BIR had extended the deadline for the filing of tax returns and payment of taxes to provide relief to taxpayers amid the pandemic. The due date for the filing of income tax returns, in particular, was moved to June 15 from the original deadline of April 15.
Amid the movement restrictions implemented to contain the coronavirus pandemic, the BIR encouraged taxpayers to use its electronic facilities to file their tax returns and settle their tax obligations.
These include the Electronic Filing and Payment System (eFPS) and the eBIRForm facility. It is also tapping authorized agent banks, the Landbank Link.biz Portal, Development Bank of the Philippines PayTax Online System, Unionbank Online, GCash and PayMaya to facilitate online payments.
According to the DOF, the number of taxpayers who filed their tax returns online more than doubled to 58 percent in 2019 from 25 percent in 2015.
“This marks a major breakthrough for the BIR as the tracking data show that more taxpayers filed electronically or online as compared to those who did so by manual filing in 2019,” Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said.
“That there are more people who filed their taxes electronically than those who filed their tax returns manually even before COVID-19 struck this year proves that the government has started to reap the fruits of the BIR’s nonstop efforts under the Duterte watch to make tax compliance more convenient and accessible for our taxpayers,” he said.
According to BIR data, 25 percent of taxpayers paid their taxes electronically in 2015, or the year before President Duterte went into office. This rose steadily to 35 percent in 2016, and to 46 percent in 2017.
By 2018, there were already more electronic filers than manual filers, accounting for 55 percent of all taxpayers. This increased even higher to 58 percent in 2019.
The BIR said this translated to P1.83 trillion in taxes paid online, 84 percent of the agency’s P2.17 trillion total revenues last year.
This was also up 59 percent from the P1.15 trillion collected by the bureau through electronic channels in 2015, which accounted for 80 percent of the bureau’s total collections that year.
According to data from the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr), revenues generated by the BIR in the first five months of the year went down by 25.84 percent to P673.7 billion from P908.5 billion last year.
For the month of May alone, BIR collections contracted by 44.13 percent P114.4 billion from P204.8 billion in the same month in 2019.
The Treasury attributed this to the effect of the prolonged community quarantine measures, which prompted the BIR to extend the deadline for the filing of income tax returns to June 15.
Source: https://www.philstar.com/business/2020/07/01/2024685/e-payments-account-77-birs-h1-collections