Operatives of the Bureau of Internal Revenue on Friday night seized 700 boxes of various vape products in a raid on a warehouse located at Soler corner Sales streets in Quiapo, Manila.

Led by BIR Deputy Commissioner Jun Lumaagui, the raiding team stormed the third-floor unit of a building where unregistered vaping products were stored.

It was the second raid by the BIR this week that led to the confiscation of the devices being used as substitutes for cigarettes.

Lumagui said the government would have lost millions of pesos if the vape products had reached the market without proper documentation and levying of taxes.

He warned that losses in government revenues from illegally imported vape products could reach billions of pesos annually.

As many as 100,000 vaping units had been confiscated in the raid that was conducted based on intelligence reports on sales transacted through the Internet.

Lumagui told Daily Tribune that with a selling price of P300 per unit, the total confiscated vapes could easily amount between P15 million to P30 million. He said losses in government revenues from the illegal vape trade had been estimated already at P1.4 billion.

The excise tax for nicotine salts used in vaping is P47 per milligram, he pointed out.

With an estimated 500,000 units per month brought in illegally with an average 5-milligram content at P47 per milligram, government losses are projected at P117.5 million per month or P1.410 billion annually, he said.

"We are serious in our crackdown on illicit vape traders who do not comply with excise tax payments. Expect this is not the last," the BIR official said.