MAASIN CITY - The Bureau of Internal Revenue District Office here has once again stepped up its information campaign on the increased expanded value-added tax (EVAT) implementation to assure consumers that the office has been on top of the situation by constant monitoring on business establishments for overpricing.
At the KAABAG Cable TV program on Feb. 2, Susan Dy Golo, chief, assessment section of Revenue District 90, urged the consuming public to seek and ask for receipts regularly in every purchase of goods and the payment of services, for in so doing the tax due to be derived from EVAT would surely go to the government.
Some TV viewers called in and reacted that some stores add the additional 12% to the purchase price when customers insist to be issued original receipts, and Golo promptly advised them to see her at the BIR office and also the DTI to consider charging overpricing sanctions on erring stores.
Since the imposition of the 10% EVAT on Nov. 1 last year and the additional 2% increase starting Feb. 1, Golo has maintained that the EVAT is already incorporated in the item the consumers bought, and so adding 12% more to the price already constitute overpricing.
Golo underscored the need for the people to demand receipts, saying that 20% of the taxes collected through the EVAT was budgeted for the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) share of various local government units across the country, like the provinces, cities, municipalities and barangays.
In a related development, Finance Secretary Margarito Teves was quoted in online reports as saying that the 2% increase in the value-added tax could erase the country’s budget deficit two years earlier, in 2008, instead of 2010 as programmed.
Aside from that, the government may now be able to build 2,000 classrooms, extend health insurance premiums to 3.1 million indigents, reforest some 9,000 hectares of forest lands, and provide 1,012 kilometers of farm-to-market roads, Finance Secretary Teves said.
Here in this city, the BIR has teamed up with the city government to inspire consumers to insist being issued receipts and in the process attain the twin objectives of heightened tax awareness and improved tax collection.
“Pangayo og Resibo” Raffle promo offers modest cash prizes for monthly draw winners from Jan. to Dec. 2006, with the city government budgeting a total of P100,000 for this undertaking. Only receipts issued in Maasin City are qualified to join the raffle promo.
