Philippine tax agency sets sights on online casinos for Chinese
MANILA: The Philippines’ tax agency is setting its sights on more than 50 companies operating online casinos catering to Chinese punters, and their thousands of Chinese workers.
The companies in question must register with the Bureau of Internal Revenue before the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp would renew their licences, the Department of Finance said in a statement.
The tax bureau also wants to join an inter-agency team monitoring the number of Chinese nationals working in the online gaming industry.
More than 50 companies referred to as Philippines-based offshore gaming operators, or POGOs, have set up businesses since President Rodrigo Duterte’s government began awarding licences in 2016, triggering the migration of tens of thousands of Chinese workers.
Of the more than 115,000 permits given to foreign workers from 2015 to 2017, 51,000 were issued to Chinese nationals, a labour ministry official said in November.
According to the labour ministry official, more than three million Chinese have entered the Philippines from 2016 and many of them have applied for work permits.
In November, Senator Joel Villanueva expressed alarm, saying the number of Chinese workers in the Philippines is much higher than the number of permits issued.
That has prompted Duterte to say days later that Filipinos must not “get rough” on this issue.
“We want to trace these Chinese nationals employed by these gaming operators,” the statement cited Bureau of Internal Revenue deputy commissioner Arnel Guballa as saying during a recent Department of Finance Executive Committee meeting.
“They allowed us to join the task force because we are asking for data from Immigration and the Department of Labour and Employment on the list of these foreign nationals,” Guballa added. — Bloomberg