MIGHTY ‘BLOCKS GOV’T EFFORTS ON TAX ISSUE’
Duterte wants to determine amount cigarette firm should pay in deficiency taxes
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has accused the lawyers of cigarette manufacturing firm, Mighty Corporation, of "obstructing" government efforts to look into company's business activities.
President Rodrigo Duterte has earlier ordered the Department of Finance and the Bureaus of Internal Revenue and Customs to determine the correct amount that Mighty should pay in deficiency taxes after it allegedly used fake stamps.
"We have not received any written order from the President. [BIR Commissioner] Billy Dulay has not even finished quantifying how much (Mighty) should pay," Dominguez said.
Earlier, Dominguez said the BIR and BOC are gathering evidence for submission to the Department of Justice (DOJ), "preparatory to the government's filing of an air-tight case against Mighty Corp. for tax evasion and other possible charges."
"The government needs to establish strong evidence to pin down this cigarette manufacturer on such charges," Dominguez said. “We must make sure the charges stick not only to haul the guilty parties, including their possible cohorts in the government, into jail but to send a clear message to big-time tax dodgers that the Duterte administration is dead set on putting an end to their nefarious activities and sending all of them behind bars.”
Dominguez last week called on the BIR and BOC last week to file soon enough the appropriate charges against persons and companies proven to be the owners of P2.2 billion-worth of smuggled and counterfeit tobacco products, shoes and clothes that government agents had seized in a series of raids.
Among the seized goods were cigarette brands manufactured by Mighty Corp. with fake tax stamps. They were seized in Pampanga and the cities of General Santos and Zamboanga.
"They (BOC and BIR) should speed up their investigations and also look into the possible involvement of bureaucrats acting as protectors of these large-scale tax evasion attempts," he said.
According to Action for Economic Reform senior economist and trustee Jo-Ann Diosana, "If the law is followed, Mighty must pay as much as P15 billion in taxes."