‘PSE tax deficiency hits ₱189M’

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has issued to the Philippine Stock exchange (PSE) a deficiency tax assessment of P189.2 million for 2017.

In its disclosure on Tuesday, the bourse said the amount includes compromise penalty and interests up to September 30. These involved alleged deficiencies in various taxes in the calendar year 2017 including income tax, value-added tax, expanded withholding tax, among others.

“The company will dispute said assessment and will take appropriate legal action for the cancellation of the assessment,” the PSE said.

In 2017, the PSE earned P246.97 million on gross revenues of P616.06 million.

The PSE said its net income in the first quarter reached P203.16 million, slightly lower than the previous year’s P204.21 million.

The lower income was due to the 2-percent decline in operating revenues, which fell to P382.28 million from the previous year’s

P390.74 million.

“Cost and expenses were higher mainly because of the P13.39 million higher software and hardware maintenance costs of the trading system, new clearing and settlement system, and disclosure portal.”

Cost of services and administrative expenses for the quarter amounted to P172.71 million, higher by P14.71 million or 9 percent from last year’s P158 million. Of this, more than half or P90.79 million represented cost of services consisting of expenses that are directly related to the operations of the bourse such as compensation and other related staff costs, depreciation, office expenses, communications, and repairs and maintenance.

Investments in financial assets registered an improvement in fair value of 64 percent or P3.05 million from last year’s net loss of P47.7 million. This pertained to the Pse’s investment in equity funds and US dollar-denominated bonds which are being managed by professional fund managers under a purely discretionary mandate.