Can the BIR deliver this time?

It’s difficult to get excited over the much-publicized crusade  of the Bureau of Internal Revenue to file tax-evasion cases every week. The revenue commissioner has instructed all 19 BIR regional directors to dig up the financial statements of suspected tax cheats to find out if a case could be built against them. The bureau calls its campaign RATE—Run after Tax Evaders.

A big part of the campaign will rely on what the BIR calls predictive auditing. The bureau matches a person’s wealth with the taxes he has paid. If the tax payments are way below the known assets, the BIR’s investigators go to work, cross-checking information with other government agencies to validate discrepancies.