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THE Department of Finance said Friday that the issuance of tax
credit certificates (TCC) dropped in the last 10 years after a
controversial tax scam.
In a statement, Ernesto Q. Hiansen, One Stop
Shop Inter-Agency Tax Credit and Duty Drawback Center (OSS)
executive director said TCC issuances reached P3.837 billion from
1998 to last year, down from the previous record of P11.94 billion
in 1995 to 1998, the period covered by high-profile anomalies in the
use of the tax perk.
The government’s savings over a decade is in
line with trimming down the issuance of TCCs to prevent a repeat of
a scam.
TCCs are refund payments made by the government
on the duties and taxes paid by export enterprises for imported
materials they use. Instead of cash refund, the OSS issues TCCs that
companies use to settle their tax obligations. Some beneficiaries in
turn had traded or sold their certificates to companies wanting to
avail of this perk.
Hiansen said the decrease is due to the
re-engineering of the OSS Center after the tax credit scam was
discovered.
Besides the lower issuance of TCCs, Hiansen said
the OSS likewise cut the revenues waived from 2001 to 2006 by 1.35
percent.
The TCC scam defrauded the government of P5.3
billion in potential revenues.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue had filed four
cases against oil giants Petron Corp. and Pilipinas Shell Petroleum
Corp. before the Court of Appeals and the Court of Tax Appeals for
depriving the government of P2.31 billion in revenues.
The Bureau of Customs, meanwhile, is pursuing 60
cases that have deprived the government of P3 billion in revenues.
-- Chino S. Leyco
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