Taxmen bewail inclusion of DPWH’s taxes in their goal

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

CALASIAO - Some Revenue District Office (RDO) chiefs deplored that the central government still included in their tax target this year the taxes of those contractors at the Department of the Public Works & Highway the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s central office had imposed to collect for itself this year.

Logos of the Department of Public Works & Highways and the BIR

RDO -4 based here has a tax goal this year of P4, 772, 404,000.00 compared to its last year’s target of P4, 015, 661,029.41.

It is a spike of P756, 742, 971 or 18.90% from the last year’s collection.

That collection in 2017 and repeated as target for 2018 still includes the DPWH taxes, a source at the RDO-4 that supervised the two cities and 13 towns’ Central Pangasinan.

“It’s tough for our RDO-Chief since we are no longer allowed to collect the DPWH taxes but they are included in this year’s collection,” a source, who asked for anonymity, at the BIR told this newspaper.

Another source at the RDO-6 based in Eastern Pangasinan said that despite its almost P2.3 billion tax goal this year had been reduced by P200 million because of the public works’ taxes, the office still faces a tall order because the reduction was only to the almost P300 million.

The P300 million was an increased from the almost P2 billion collection last year by RDO-6.

“Although the P300 million became P100 million or our present roughly P2.1 billion goal, we still have to collect a significant part of the DPWH taxes inside the P2 billion for this year,” the source lamented.

 Early this year, RDO-6 was tasked to collect P2, 298, 570,000.00 or almost 40 % more of its last year’s collection of P1, 900, 827,797.19 until it was reduced by the national office by P200 million.

The policy of the BIR to funnel to the central office in Quezon City the contractor’s taxes here have been a dilemma of the RDO chiefs all over the country, the source cited,  because their target for this year contains the assessment from these contractors.

The regional office of the Bureau of Internal Revenue in Region 1 that oversees four provinces was tasked by the national government to collect P17, 646,987,000.00 this year.

The BIR is geared to collect all over the country a P2.039 trillion's target this year.