Revenue district offices in Cebu and Bohol failed to meet their collection targets, incurring double-digit deficits in the first two months of the year.
Cumulatively, the five Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) offices in Mandaue City, Cebu City North, Cebu City South, Talisay City, and Tagbilaran City in Bohol posted a deficit of 17.98 percent.
Individually, the biggest deficit was incurred by Cebu City South at 23.6 percent, followed by Tagbilaran City with 18.15 percent, Cebu City North with 17.68 percent, Mandaue City with 17.54 percent, and lastly, Talisay City with 10.77 percent.
“Although it’s still too early in the year to be negative-minded, we are already worried. Two months in and there’s already a deficit. But we are still hopeful that there will be one-time transactions that will cover our deficit,” said BIR 13 chief legal officer Neri Yu.
He said they were banking on the construction of big-ticket projects at the South Road Properties (SRP) and the start of the construction of the Cebu-Cordova Bridge.
Yu said they were working twice as hard to reach the target by covering more of the tax base and conducting seminars among cooperatives that are not qualified for tax exemption.
“If we can’t get the goal, at least our deficit should not be as high as the 7.5 percent attrition rate,” he said.
Under the Attrition Act of 2005, or Republic Act 9335, all officers or employees whose revenue collections fall short of the target by 7.5 percent or greater will either be demoted or removed from office.
BIR-13, which covers Cebu and Bohol, was assigned a target of P36.36 billion this year, about 43 percent more than the P25.4-billion target last year.
“If you distribute that P11 billion additional in the 12 months of 2016, that’s an increase almost a billion per month in terms of targets. Divided among the districts, that’s around P200 million increase in their collections every month,” Yu told Cebu Daily News.
“That’s a lot of money. You can’t even expect businesses to increase their sales this year by 40 percent,” he added in Cebuano.
Nationwide, the target is P2.025 trillion, which BIR Commissioner Kim Henares described as “unrealistic.”