The taxmen pay taxes, too

This the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) made clear yesterday when it belied a report in one newspaper, reiterating its remittance of withholding taxes and the social contributions of its employees on time as mandated by governing laws.

It denied not paying P80.914 million supposedly for the withholding taxes and deductions of its own staff for the month of December 2017. The amount was remitted January 2018, the bureau’s management explained in a statement Tuesday.

The BIR said the amount in question included withholding taxes due to the bureau itself amounting to P44.923 million. It was remitted promptly before the 15 January 2018 deadline set under the National Internal Revenue Code of 1997 as amended.

A total of P4.022 million was refunded to the employees, it said.

According to the bureau, amounts of P20.629 million, P1.446 million and P2.581 million were also promptly remitted before the statutory deadline of 10 January 2018 to the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) and Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG), respectively.

The remaining balances of P6.955 million due to BIR; P2.695 million to GSIS; P450,602.46 to PhilHealth and P0.19 million to Pag-IBIG are for reconciliation, the BIR added.

The bureau said these account balances do not represent any unremitted amount by the BIR as they pertain to the carry-over balances during the e-NGAS implementation from the manual system starting in 2004, amounts to be refunded to BIR employees and accounts for adjustment.

The BIR said there was nothing in the Commission Annual Audit Report that said the tax agency failed to remit any withholding tax and deduction on time.

The bureau said the report simply recommended and that the BIR agreed to require the Disbursement Accounting Division (DAD) to conduct an in-depth reconciliation/analysis of the inter-agency payable accounts; remit the balances, if any and revert those without claimants.

It likewise recommended that personnel in-charge of the payrolls in the HRD and DAD be required to conduct a regular reconciliation of employees’ payroll so that what is deducted from the employees’ salaries should be the same amount to be remitted on or before their due dates, it said.