The Department of Finance on Tuesday said is focusing on raising the percentage of tax collection to gross domestic product this year to have enough money for government projects.
Part of the approach is increasing the collection targets of various revenue collection agencies in the country, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima told reporters in a briefing, saying the government is bent on pursuing the goal because raising the percent of revenues as a percentage of GDP “... will allow us to have some fiscal space for the other projects that we want to deliver.
Starting in February, Finance Department officials will discuss the goal with tax collectors nationwide. "First, in coordination with the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs, we will set individual regional targets for various BIR and BOC units..." Purisima said.
The government is been on raising the average tax collection of P7,000 for professionals and self-employed individuals to P200,000. "… This was already mentioned by President Aquino in his previous SONA—an area of major opportunity. What we've done is gather what is the average per office... Our goal is to increase the current average tax collection...” according to the Finance chief.
If the government succeeds in this, there would be additional revenues of about P300 billion or about 3 percent of the GDP, he said.
Another area of interest to the government is the real estate sector.
“As we all know, asset prices have increased. If you analyze the estate tax collected by the government, it only ranges from P850 million to a billion," Purisima noted, saying the goal is to reach P50 billion a year. "We will work closely with the BIR and its offices to move toward this target... "but we don't expect that to happen overnight. But if we succeed that is another .5 percent of the GDP."
Benchmarking prices of imported products is also in the sights of the Finance Department on the notion of the relationship with transportation costs and the cost of containers and shipping.
"We will work on different commodities also, for example construction materials, said Purisima. As you know there is increased construction activity in the country, so we expect increases in steel, fixtures, tiles... all these imported items.
“We will start looking at increasing taxes on these," he added, noting this will be done in close coordination with the Customs Bureau. — VS, GMA News
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