BIR to right-size operations
As part of the Marcos administration’s digitalization shift, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) plans to right-size its workforce and hire scientists and cybersecurity experts to improve collections.
BIR Commissioner Lilia C. Guillermo said she wants to strengthen the bureau’s organization, through enhanced human resource capabilities and internal processes as well as highly efficient and effective administrative and support services. Last Friday, Aug. 1I, Guillermo unveiled the BIR’s four pillars for its digitalization shift. They include strengthening of the organization; modernizing its digital backbone; enhancing policies, governance, and standards; and elevating taxpayer experience and innovating services.
To attain that goal, Guillermo said the BIR will embark on a digital transformation program that includes organizational structuring reforms in the agency, which is responsible for about two-thirds of government revenues.
“Organizational structuring is aligned to digital transformation.
You've heard about right sizing a while ago and this is what we will do, we will scrap and build some items in the Bureau of Internal Revenue,” Guillermo said in a recent tax forum.
President Marcos has prioritized the National Government Rightsizing Program, which aims to streamline the government bureaucracy by merging, splitting, transferring and abolishing some of its offices.
Included in the BIR’s right-sizing plan is boosting digital infrastructure. Guillermo said this would require hiring of cybersecurity experts, and data scientists as well as the creation of a data governance office.
“Introduce cybersecurity experts, [and] data scientists, which are very important... as well as the data governance office. It is very important that we have such positions to make this digital transformation happen and be successful,” the BIR chief said.
Meanwhile, Guillermo admitted that the BIR has some shortcomings as well, particularly in the implementation of the e-invoicing system.
According to the BIR chief, there was a low response to the agency’s e-invoicing program, citing that only 15 out of 100 largescale taxpayers responded to the pilot of the electronic invoicing/ receipting system (EIS).
The e-invoicing system is capable of processing and storing electronic invoices issued by taxpayers on near real-time, making it easy to issue digital receipts and capture and upload the data in the receipt to a centralized database.