The Manila Times

More bad news from the Dept of Lowered Expectatio­ns

-

THE Department of Finance (DoF) has reduced the government’s target for revenue

of the Comprehens­ive Tax Reform Program (CTRP) by nearly 30 percent, after failing to implement

- ect the government will realize a

the tax reform measure this year -

- supposed to be awarded to a contractor and implemente­d next year, while the e-invoice system is planned for implementa­tion

- out at least one weird public disclosure from the DoF, and is an implicit admittance of failure, and its substance, stripped of the interpreti­ve tap-dance of bureaucrat­ic rhetoric, is basically this: The presumptio­n behind the

revenue” target was that part of that amount would be generated

which taxes can be evaded in the distributi­on of fuel or in retail

- ing scheme and the e- invoice program, were devised in or-

implementa­tion

of both has - taxes that would be collected if everyone concerned was paying

-

records of the taxes they avoid, even indirectly, so the estimated

-

- strating the same shortcomin­g in

as every other government this country has ever had: The strange belief that the only appropriat­e solution to a performanc­e failure in bureaucrat­ic processes is not to address the performanc­e failure directly, but to create an entirely is of course completely inane;

Third, having sold Congress on the necessity of new processes as the only or at least the preferred way to solve the problem of rev-

to implement them, undermin-

case of the e-invoice program, a less than speedy implementa­tion could be forgiven because of its complexity, although in that case the DoF should not have counted on its positive contributi­on so

delay can be attributed to simple bureaucrat­ic dithering for which

- tion of a traceable organic compound to fuel before it leaves

shipment of

fuel can then be traced with the use of simple detection equipment, which prevents various forms of fraud such as diluting the fuel, delivering it to a different destinatio­n, or substituti­ng it with a different

widely- used system offered by

vendors, and there is simply no reason why the procuremen­t

The amount of revenue that could have been recovered by imple-

might be uncertain, but whatever that amount really is, the blame for its not being recovered so far

To be fair, the e-invoice system is a much more challengin­g prop-

point-of-sale systems throughout the country to be connected to the Bureau of Internal Revenue ( BIR), so that transactio­ns are

- sides the process advantages for both the BIR and businesses in digitizing a substantia­l part of the tax monitoring and collec-

taxes through under- reporting

Implementi­ng the program is a huge technical leap for the

which is why the implementa­tion

On that schedule, the program should be rolled out by mid2020, and so far it appears to puzzling why the DoF even counted any contributi­on from the e-invoice system in its revenue

as with the non-implementa­tion

presumed foregone revenue thus becomes the fault of the DoF, and not some external extenuatin­g

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