THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) yesterday filed tax evasion charges before the Department of Justice against four “ghost cooperations” that it said deprived the government’s coffers of P25.5 billion in unpaid taxes.
The case stemmed from a December 2022 raid at a condominium unit in Quezon City where thousands of fake receipts were recovered.
Among those charged with violation of National Internal Revenue Code of 1997 were the Buildforce Trading Inc., Crazykitchen Foodtrade Corp., Decarich Supertrade Inc., and Redington Corporation and their officers.
BIR Commissioner Romeo Lumagui Jr. said that after last year’s raid, their investigation showed the firms did not engage in any legitimate business activity.
“The companies were only established for the sole purpose of selling fictitious sales invoices and/or receipts to their respective buyers for the latter’s claim of anomalous and false purchases. If you look at the address of these corporations, they are not there and there is absolutely no property, nor any transaction that they sell anything or provide services to those they issue receipts,” Lumagui said.
“As a result of these companies’ fraudulent tax schemes, the government is losing an estimated total deficiency income tax amounting to P17.63 billion and total deficiency value added tax amounting to P7.91 billion, for taxable years 2019-2021, including surcharges and interests,” he said.
Lumagui said charges will also be filed against the buyers of the fictitious receipts, though he did not identify them.
“We have a list of both buyers and sellers of these fictitious receipts. Our main goal here is to put these fraudulent activities into a halt with high hopes of increasing voluntary tax compliance,” the BIR chief added.
Prior to the December 2022 raid, a tax evasion case worth P1.2 billion was also filed before the DOJ against five individuals behind the selling of millions of pesos worth of illegal vape products.
Last month, 74 individuals were charged by the BIR for evading the payment of taxes worth P3.58 billion.
