INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Customs (BOC) collected P60.2 billion in import duties and other taxes slapped on oil products during the first quarter, on the back of a 4.7 billion liters of marked fuel.
In a statement on Monday, the BOC said its first-quarter tax take from oil brought to a cumulative P374.1 billion its collections under the fuel marking program, which it started in September 2019.
As of end-March, it marked a total of 39.3 billion liters of oil products, with a chemical signifying correct tax payments
The Philippines imports the bulk of the oil it uses.
“Diesel comprised 60.5 percent of the total volume marked, followed by gasoline with 38.9 percent, and kerosene with 0.5 percent. As to location, 73.7 percent of the marking was in Luzon, 20.9 percent in Mindanao, and 5.4 percent in the Visayas,” the BOC said.
At present, 28 oil companies were participating in the fuel marking program being jointly implemented by the BOC and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).
To date, the country’s two biggest tax-collection agencies confiscated 93,043.8 liters of diesel, 18,839 liters of kerosene, as well as two tank trucks carrying unmarked fuel with an estimated value of P13.4 million, the BOC said.
“Tanks of 12 retail stations and two private companies where the BOC found these unmarked fuels were likewise sealed and recommended for filing criminal cases,” it added.
“The BOC will continuously implement its mandate to mark petroleum products under the fuel marking program to raise revenues while curbing fuel smuggling and leveling the playing field in the Philippine oil industries,” it said.
Before the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Law which implemented fuel marking took effect in 2018, government and industry estimates had shown that annual foregone revenues from smuggled oil were equivalent to over half of actual duties and taxes collected by the BOC and the BIR, or about P27-44 billion yearly.
Excess collections from the 12-percent value-added tax (VAT) levied on fuel products would partly finance the total of P47.5 billion in assistance to sectors most badly hit by expensive oil amid the Ukraine-Russia war. At an estimated average global oil price of $110 per barrel in 2022, the government had projected to collect an additional P26 billion in VAT this year.
Out of the BOC’s record-high monthly collection of P70.7 billion in March, P26.5 billion came from import duties and other taxes slapped on costly oil, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III had said.
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