BIR Exec lauds China’s tax system, bustling economy

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

URDANETA CITY – As a lone representative of the Philippines to a tax seminar in China, the honcho of the Bureau of Internal Revenue here hailed the tax system and burgeoning economy of the Sino.

BEIJING SEMINAR. CPA-Lawyer Maria Isabel B. Utit (extreme right), the honcho of the Bureau 

of Internal Revenue in Pangasinan, poses with her fellow 16 participants from different countries 

who attended the three weeks Seminar on Tax Administration and Taxpayer Service for Developing 

Countries II in 2006 held recently in Beijing, People’s Republic of China. Utit, the Revenue District 

Office-6 Chief of Eastern Pangasinan, was the lone representative of the Philippines to the Seminar. 

Lawyer Maria Isabel B. Utit, the chief of the Revenue District Office-6, said that the tax system there was exceptionally efficient.

The declaration of RDO-6 Chief to Northern Watch ensued after she attended the “Seminar on Tax Administration and Taxpayer Service for Developing Countries II in 2006” held in Beijing, People’s Republic of China.

She cited that immediately after a consumer bought say, a pair of shoes, the taxes the government got from the taxpayer and the seller as seen on the receipt is automatically wired to the national government tax data.

Lawyer Utit was impressed by the phenomenal economic development of Mainland China.

"Suzhuo Industrial Park or SIP is a 289 square kilometer industrial development park. It has an industrial, commercial, residential, and amusement areas. The industrial area is the manufacturing area for the latest and most advanced technology, residential area is intended to accommodate around one million residents of SIP to bring home the workers closer to the office. The amusement area is built around it's body of water. SIP is expected to be the world's new Singapore in 2030," she stressed.

She explained that the leaders in China and Singapore collaborated in how the former steered her booming economy as based on how Singapore developed her highly successful city- state.

The tax lawyer said that China projected to eradicate poverty in that mammoth country in 2018.

“It is the second largest economy in the world but it is also a developing country,” she said.

She cited that in October 2016, the government made the Two-Child Policy effective in lieu of the One-Child Policy.

China’s One-Child Policy, according to britannica.com, was an official program initiated in the late 1970s and early ’80s by the central government  of China, the purpose of which was to limit the great majority of family units in the country to one child each. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China’s enormous population. It was announced in late 2015 that the program was to end in early 2016.

“Makikita mo marami ng senior citizens kaysa dito sa atin. Iyong McDonald walang 30 years old doon. Doon makikita mo 50 and 60 years old nagtatrabaho naglilinis sa kalsada, mga aging na”.

According to the National Geographic, the reason China is doing the Two-Child Policy was because they have too many men, too many old people, and too few young people.

“They have this huge crushing demographic crisis as a result of the One-Child Policy. And if people don’t start having more children, they’re going to have a vastly diminished workforce to support a huge aging population,” the magazine stressed.

Utit said the seminar last October 11 to 31 in Beijing was sponsored, from airline fares to hotel accommodation,  by China’s Ministry of Commerce  (MOFCOM) of the People's Republic of China, and implemented by the Academy for Internal Business Officials (AIBO), a training institute under MOFCOM, that were attended by 17 participants from countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and those in Africa and South America.