ABS-CBN cries uncle, settles five tax cases, gets hefty discount
ABS-CBN has made peace with the Bureau of Internal Revenue, settling at least five tax cases with the tax agency, while the broadcast network makes a fresh attempt to renew its congressional franchise that is expiring next March.
According to judicial records, the broadcast network, a pet peeve of you-know-who, has signed five compromise agreements with BIR Commissioner Caesar Dulay since November.
The latest settlement harked back to a 2015 case filed by then BIR commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares, involving over P95 million in alleged unpaid income, value-added, and withholding taxes for fiscal year 2009.
That P95 million alleged liability was settled for P16.1 million with Dulay “without any admission of liability” on either party.
Last week the Court of Tax Appeals, which is presiding over the litigation, granted its approval, as it had done with the four previous tax cases settled by ABS-CBN with the tax agency.
In February the tax appellate court also approved a compromise agreement with the BIR and ABS-CBN, with the country’s largest broadcast network paying only 40 percent, equivalent to P152.44 million, of its alleged tax liability.
ABS-CBN’s change-of-tack comes amid the filing of two House bills seeking not only the renewal of the network’s broadcast franchise, but also for its mobile telephony and wireless broadband internet business.
Nueva Ecija Rep. Micaela Violago last month refiled a bill seeking to renew the ABS-CBN franchise, which will expire on March 20, for another 25 years.
Another bill, authored by party-list Rep. Jericho Jonas Nograles of Davao, was filed Dulay last week seeking to renew the franchise of ABS-CBN Converge to operate a radio paging, mobile telephony, and wireless broadband internet system.
Currently operating in partnership with Globe, ABS-CBN Converge “ensures that there is at least a third player in the telecommunications industry other than Globe and Smart,” Nograles said.
Third player? Isn’t that already Chelsea/Mislatel?
Club confers spousal rights to gay partner The Baguio Country Club has made local LGBT history when it quietly conferred spousal rights to a gay man whose “husband” is a long-standing member and shareholder of the club.
Known in society circles for partying in sharp sartorial style, the couple were reportedly married in Vermont, thus legally extending to the partners same property rights as enjoyed by heterosexual couples.
The gay couple, according to the grapevine, promised the BCC board that they would not do anything within the club’s public spaces that would scandalize the Catholic Women’s League or frighten the horses.
A Sampaloc hospital has withheld giving the maintenance medicines of the bedridden autistic son of late Senator Eva Estrada-Kalaw, following the failure of his designated guardian to pay for his accumulated hospital bills.
The guardian, who holds the purse, is supposed to be on an extended holiday in Europe.
Apparently the bedridden son has become hostage to a property feud bedevelling the heirs of the late senator.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com