City tax collection decreases

By WENDY ATUBAN
www.nordis.net

BAGUIO CITY — While the whole region’s tax collection performance is a little bit over the goal, this city has a significant decrease in its targeted collection from January to October this year, officials said on wednesday.

Among the revenue districts in the Cordillera Administrative Region, only Baguio has failed to meet the regional Bureau of Internal Revenue’s designated collection goal.

The revenue goal for the city was 240,438,442 but it only came up with 108, 351,215. the deficient amount is pegged at 132,087,227 or -55%, records of the BIR-CAR shows.

Abra recorded the highest tax collection with an overgoal of 98%. The minimum target for Abra is 8,249,610 but the collection went up to 16,315,016. Coming next is Ifugao with 46% increase, Trinidad and Benguet with 33% increase, Kalinga with 32% and Mt. Province with 30% increase.
All in all, CAR incurred a 2% over the goal. The region collected a total of 2,520,931,368 with the overgoal at 37,749,368.

Norberto Vitug, BIR regional director said the deficiency suffered by the city may be blamed on the global economic slowdown in the first part of the year and the typhoons that devastated the city. The decision of the electronic industry in the city to pay taxes at their main office is also a major cause of the incurred deficiency in the tax revenue.

Vitug said Texas Instrument and Sitel opted to pay their taxes at their national offices. He mentioned that the city is very dependent on the payment of TI which was affected by the global economic slowdown during the first quarters of this year.

Vitug bared in a presentation made during the weekly Kapihan that TI contributes 324,550,000 in tax revenues while Sitel adds 56,600,000. However, Vitug said the electronics industries are picking up this time and the business sector in the region are performing as expected.

Furthermore, he said all the industries in the region have already overcomed the initial effects of the implementation of RA 9504 or the law exempting minimum wage earners from tax collection. In fact he claims there is 46% increase in VAT collection this year. # nordis.ne