The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) on Tuesday said it is optimistic it will meet its collection target for the first quarter of the year.
Preliminary data as of 10:30 am of March 31 showed the BIR’s collection in the first three months of 2025 was just 0.48 percent shy of the target.
The numbers are still preliminary and will be finalized before the official revenue report is released, the BIR said.
BIR data showed the bureau generated P668.79 billion in the first quarter of 2025, compared with its collection goal of P671.994 billion.
“For 2025, our target is P3.23 trillion. Based on the progress of our programs that we have already laid out, and also based on the progress of the first months from January to March, our collection is running well. That is also what we expect this month of April and in the next months,” Internal Revenue Commissioner Romeo Lumagui Jr. said in a press conference in Manila on Tuesday.
Year-on-year, the government’s largest revenue-generating agency saw a significant increase from its P593.001 billion collections in January to March 2024.
Lumagui said there has been an increase
in compliance this year, particularly in value-added tax (VAT) collections due to the BIR’s campaign and enforcement activities against ghost receipts.
Ghost receipts are sales slips with fictitious transactions, which are then bought and used by businesses to avoid paying the right amount of taxes.
“Those corporations are very well-known, so VAT compliance is increasing,” Lumagui said.
“It’s mostly because of the ghost receipts — they need those for VAT. That’s what’s being manipulated more than income tax. Income tax is easier to handle, since you can just opt for the 40 percent standard deduction. You don’t even need receipts for that,” he added.
