PH seeks US grant for tax academy

The Department of Finance (DOF) said yesterday that the government is seeking a possible grant from the United States (US) in establishing the Philippines’ first training institution for tax collectors.

In a statement, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said that he met with the US Treasury official for International Affairs where the Philippines conveyed its plan to establish its first tax academy for revenue officials and employees.

According to Dominguez, the proposed Philippine Tax Academy aims to provide professional education on improving tax collection competence and efficiency among the employees of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and Bureau of Customs.

Dominguez told US Treasury Undersecretary David Malpass during their recent meeting in Washington DC that the Department of Finance (DOF) plans to set up the tax academy by January next year.

“Both [agencies] are under me and we're doing short-term things but really, in the long term, we need better skills, better ethics,” Dominguez said of the planned tax academy project during the meeting with Malpass.

The finance chief also briefly discussed the DOF’s tax academy project in a recent forum in the US Capital organized by think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Dominguez said a previous US grant that aims to improve business processes and revenue collections in the BIR was partly instrumental in the success of the Philippines' recent effort to collect the largest sum of taxes ever from a single corporate entity.

“The assistance to us really bore fruit. Because of the help they gave us in improving the skills of the BIR in analyzing data, we were able to nail the largest taxfraud case in history,” Dominguez said.

“We collected $600 million recently from a cigarette company that was cheating on taxes, and I said to some extent that's due to the help of the US,” he added at the CISS forum.

Dominguez, meanwhile, said the planned tax academy would not involve any construction of new buildings but would focus on training revenue and customs officers to improve their efficiency and competencies in tax matters.

Malpass said Dominguez’s plan to save on funds by just renting out space in local community colleges and universities to house the campuses of the tax academy was a “good idea.”