A US$500 million tax settlement offer by a tobacco maker may be difficult for the Philippine government to refuse as it struggles to raise funds.
Philippine Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Caesar Dulay, whose agency collects 80 percent of revenue, said he is keen on accepting a 25 billion-peso (US$494 million) compromise offer from Mighty Corp to settle three complaints for alleged unpaid taxes worth 38 billion pesos.
While it is the Philippines’ Finance Department which will decide on the offer, that amount is too hard to resist, he said in an interview on Thursday.
Revenue rose 8.9 percent in the first half of the year, missing a goal of a 12 percent increase, the tax commissioner said, citing unpublished preliminary data.
The tax agency is tasked to raise 1.83 trillion pesos this year, an increase of about 16 percent.
The tax agency is hiring 10,000 employees of which 70 percent are accountants, the commissioner said, adding that as many as 1,200 people had already been hired as of last month and the plan was to get 1,000 more the rest of the year.
“Let’s face it: voluntary compliance is low yielding,” said Dulay, a lawyer who has been friends with Duterte since they were students. “We have to continue enforcement, specifically the filing of cases against tax evaders.”
A plunder complaint filed against him and more than a dozen officials for an alleged anomalous reduction in the tax liability of Del Monte Philippines Inc is hurting the agency, Dulay said.
The commissioner said he had no personal knowledge of Del Monte’s tax assessments.
Del Monte has been diligently paying its taxes and the levies it paid in 2011 to 2013 were correct, the company said in a statement this month.
The tax agency had validated Del Monte’s tax payments, Dulay said.
“Collection is affected. The morale is low because the bureau is under the limelight,” Dulay said. “People are afraid to conduct assessment; they want to play it safe. I have a problem.”
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last