BIR, BOC collections up 8% in June

Revenues collected by the government’s two main tax agencies in June increased, but fell below their targets for the month, documents from the Department of Finance (DOF) revealed.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Bureau of Customs reported to the DOF that their total tax collections reached R171.88 billion last month, higher by 8 percent compared with R159.28 billion in the previous year.

But the single-digit growth in collection is not enough to meet the BIR and Customs’ combined collection target of R184.1 billion for June.

Based on the BIR report submitted to the DOF, the country’s biggest tax-collection agency raised P134.66 billion during the month, an increase of 8.6 percent compared from P124 billion a year ago.

However, the BIR’s total tax take was short by 7.3 percent against the R145.37 billion target for the month.

The agency’s latest collection figure brought its total revenues to R851.43 billion in the first semester of the year, an improvement of 8.7 percent compared with R783.42 billion in the same period in 2016.

The BIR’s end-June tax collection, however, was less than half of its full year target of R1.829 trillion.

Despite the lower than expected revenues, BIR Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay said they are hopeful that they could recover the agency’s shortfall in the remaining months of the year to meet their 2017 goal.

The inter-agency Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) earlier estimated that the BIR would likely miss its target by 2.6 percent this year to R1.782 trillion.

Meanwhile, the Customs bureau also reported to the DOF that the agency’s total collected revenues reached R37.21 billion last month, higher by 5.5 percent compared with R35.27 billion in June last year.