Nearly 80 percent of the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s (BIR) tax collections in the first half of the year were settled online, as the movement of taxpayers were limited by the implementation of quarantine measures to address the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
The Department of Finance (DOF) said in a statement yesterday that preliminary data for January 1 to June 15 showed the share of e-payment collections to total BIR collections was at 77 percent this period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under the Duterte administration, the BIR has introduced additional electronic payment channels in which taxpayers can pay their tax returns online, on top of the electronic Filing and Payment System and GCash digital platform.
These include the PesoNet thru LandBank Link.biz Portal, the Development Bank of the Philippines PayTax Online System, UnionBank Online, PesoNet, and PayMaya.
The DOF also said the number of taxpayers who filed their taxes online have more than doubled over the 2015 to 2019 period, reflecting a major breakthrough in the BIR’s continuous efforts to make tax compliance more convenient and accessible for all.
The DOF said the number of taxpayers who filed their taxes electronically or online steadily increased from 25 percent of all filers in 2015 to 58 percent in 2019.
“This marks a major breakthrough for the BIR as the tracking data show that more taxpayers filed electronically or online as compared to those who did so by manual filing in 2019,” Dominguez said.
“That there are more people who filed their taxes electronically than those who filed their tax returns manually even before COVID-19 struck this year proves that the government has started to reap the fruits of the BIR’s nonstop efforts under the Duterte watch to make tax compliance more convenient and accessible for our taxpayers,” he added.
The BIR reported to Dominguez the revenues collected from taxes paid online reached P1.83 trillion in 2019, up by 59 percent from the P1.15 trillion collected by the bureau through electronic channels in 2015.
