March 2, 2015
Daily Star by Modesto Sa-onoy | http://goo.gl/oz4Xds
Not even champion Manny Pacquiao and the millions of pesos and international fame he brought to the country can sway the Bureau of Internal Revenue commissioner Kim Henares to set aside the law.
When Congress, clearly to show sympathy for Manny, planned to grant him tax exemption, Congress found a disapproving populace and it backed off. Why should the boxer be exempt from taxes when ordinary guys who eke out a living are not? While Pacquiao’s mother who pays millions for a bag and his family flaunts their wealth are free from taxes?
In the coming May fight, there are again proposals to exempt Pacquiao from paying taxes on his earnings but Henares’ response is the same: that would be unfair to the ordinary taxpayer. Indeed, why exempt him? Taxpayers also bring money to the national coffers.
As proven, time and again, taxes are the inescapable realities as death and while people try to cheat death and taxes they finally have to pay. Even in death they have to pay taxes. So abhorrent is the collection of taxes that since ancient times, tax collectors are never loved and yet without them government would ground to a halt and society would recede into primitive life.
In Pacquiao’s case he finally settled when he was able to prove he paid his withholding taxes in the US where he earned the millions in his previous fights. Of course he had to pay for his income tax less the withholding which the Philippine BIR will have to settle with its US counterpart.
For several weeks now, small sugar producers have been complaining that they cannot sell their sugar because they cannot present a receipt that they paid the one percent withholding tax for their sale. I narrowed the definition of the planters to “small” because it seems that the shouting is limited to the small ones, although I know that big ones suffer as well but most are afraid to march in the streets and shout against the BIR. I think our reader knows why there is silence from that sector.
Last week agrarian reform beneficiaries and members of sugar cooperatives marched to the BIR office and demonstrated their anger at the BIR regulation requiring them to show proof of their sales and the corresponding tax paid, but it seems that they cannot and they gave reasons for this failure.
They have three main gripes: (1) their cooperative is tax free and therefore should not pay this tax; (2) it is difficult to get their TIN from the BIR; and (3) it is hard to find a printer for their official receipts. There is another one which they claim difficult to comply with - they need an accountant for their operation.
A cursory look at their gripes tells us that these are not insurmountable if the BIR helps them comply with the requirements and the SRA expands its assistance beyond making representations with the BIR.
The SRA can help them especially in the operation of their cooperatives because SRA can also learn a lot that it can adapt to its block farms. While cooperatives are tax free for its transactions, members are not. I suspect that their cooperatives do not operate as they should, so that the members’ transactions, i.e. selling their sugar, are subjected to taxes. I suggest they study their operations more closely because in the case of taxes, there is a thin dividing line where members’ produce are indeed taxable. It is here that the BIR found the area for tax collection.
The TIN can easily by secured with the BIR helping facilitate their registration. As for the printers, the BIR has a list of printers and the small sugar farmers do not need thousands of stubs so their ORs can speedily be made. The so-called “official receipts” one finds in the sidewalk are no longer acceptable to the BIR. The receipt must be registered before they are printed.
The recording of their operations can be handled by the housewife’s simple bookkeeping.
The problem arose because for generations the agricultural sector has been ignored in terms of tax collection so that they had also lived in that paradise of the unknowing.
In my series on the Sugarcane Act bill, I mentioned the registration of all sugar producers, traders, contractors, etc. Many did not bother, thinking them harmless. The present controversy on withholding taxes can relate to this registration. The BIR campaign is just a foretaste.