Plot to abolish BIR a cover-up for P38-B anomalies - Saludo

  

THE PLOT to abolish the Bureau of Internal Revenue is being used as a cover-up for the large-scale tax evasion and profiteering that have defrauded government of at least P38 bilion.

The “insidious conspiracy” according to Rep. Aniceto G. Saludo Jr. in a privilege speech yesterday, is engineered by former commissioner of the  BIR Rene Bañez and the US-backed lobby group AGILE which had boasted in its website as “the real policy makers” in the Philippines.
Saludo described Bañez as a “world-class plunderer” working in behalf of his former employer, the Metro Pacific-PLDT group owned by the Salim family known crony of deposed Indonesian President Suharto and its other  co-conspirators  the Department of Finance, the Department of Budget Management and the National Treasury.

The Southern Leyte congressman said the ordinary and honest BIR employees are being made to account for the failures of their leaders, specifically Bañez, who granted tax breaks in billions of pesos to former employer Metro Pacific Group, owner and developer of the Fort Bonifacio Global City project in Taguig.

The billion-peso tax breaks given to Metro Pacific, a conglomerate which includes telecommunications giant PLDT, Smart, Piltel, Fort Bonifacio Development Corp and Negros Navigation  contributed greatly to the biggest tax collection shortfall by any BIR commissioner, Saludo said.

This shortfall, in turn, contributed greatly to a record-breaking budget deficit by the national government.

Saludo said that in favoring his former employer, Bañez:

 

 

  1. Exempted FBDC from a P1.189 billion documentary tax liability on the purchase of land from the government and passed it on the Bases Conversion Development Authority, for which the government paid P2.67billion, including 

    increments.  (The Court of Tax Appeals, however has declared with finality    that  Metro Pacific was liable for the documentary stamp tax and ordered it to pay the government the amount.)

         

  1. Allowed FBDC an erroneous P5.68 billion tax refund on its inventory of raw land acquired from the government.

 

  1. Caused the government P28.8 billion revenue loss arising from the reduction, initiated and promulgated by the former commissioner himself of the zonal valuation of land in Fort Bonifacio Global City.

 

Saludo said, “ Bañez strategized, engineered and even pushed personally billions of pesos worth of tax evasion schemes, which included the issuance of unnumbered and unaccounted BIR rulings granting tax exemptions to favor select taxpayers who belong to the Makati Business Group, that defrauded government of much-needed revenues that he was entrusted to generate during his watch at the BIR.

 

“Yet, the ordinary BIR employee is bombarded daily with charges of incompetence and corruption.  He is blamed for the deficit, and for the government’s failure to raise enough funds for development and initiatives.

 

“Consultancy groups such as AGILE accuse the ordinary BIR employee of corruption. USAID and AGILE then pay groups such as the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIL) to destroy his credibility and integrity.”

 

Saludo called for a congressional inquiry into the anomalies that have defrauded the government of at least P38 billion.  He also called on the BIR to immediately collect from Metro Pacific the P1.18 billion in documentary stamp tax and for the National Treasury to return the amount to the military.

 

He also asked the present BIR leadership to account for all the rulings made by Bañez and to nullify all the unnumbered rulings.