BIR Central P’gasinan excels P4B tax goal

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

CALASIAO – The biggest revenue district office (RDO) in Region – 1 based here eclipsed the goal given to it last year by the national government.

According to RDO-4 Chief Merlyn DV Vicente her two cities 14 towns supervised office chalked up P4,014,254,992.65 or an excess of P489,992.65 from the goal of P4,013,765,000.00 imposed by the national office of the Bureau of Internal Revenue in Quezon City.

AWARDEE – Revenue District Office-4 Chief Merlyn Vicente (front row second from left) poses with Bureau of Internal Revenue’s former Regional Director and now Assistant Commissioner Tess Dizon (front row third from left) and officials of the regional office and RDO-4 after the Prime District that supervised Central Pangasinan was awarded after it surpassed its tax target last December 2017.

Vicente gratefully cited the cooperation of her staff and personnel especially the 15 examiners and 15 Revenue Collection Officers (RCOs) who soldiered on to the tall order to collect the sum amidst the slowing down of businesses in the area.

She told this paper earlier that ideally her office should have 99 Examiners – a shortage endemic to all BIR offices all over the country.

She said it was a pressure charged struggle from the first three quarters of last year before all their efforts paid off when they foisted a collection by exceeding the monthly goals in November and December.

She cited benchmarking and collecting of the taxes of taxpayers at the Electronic Filing and Payment System (EFPS), monitoring, auditing, enforcing of a long term program on these people that her office formulated in the middle of last year.

“Even if I did not hit the goal and I did not go beyond the  7.5 percent subject for the Attrition Law , I will still feel good because I and the Regional Director knew that I and my staff exerted our best efforts to hit the target,” she told Northern Watch Newspaper.

A source at the tax agency said that of the six RDOs only RDO-1 in Laoag, Ilocos Norte did not meet its goal.

Aside from Vicente, RDO-4 is led by Assistant RDO- 4 Chief Tina A.  Villamil, Chief Collection Officer Marinella Tandoc, and 15 Examiners.