SALN for Private Citizens

[digitalron]

I just came across article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer site:

Private folk earning P.5M must file SALN by April 15

Here's the gist:

The order, Revenue Regulation No. 2-2011, was signed and issued on March 1 by Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima.


Every citizen making at least P38,461 a month (assuming he receives 13 months’ worth of salaries each year) will be required to file a personal SALN to justify his or her gross income to the BIR.


Beginning with the 2010 tax year—for which the deadline is on April 15—individual taxpayers, estates and trusts must completely detail to the authorities their passive income, which includes interest, royalties, dividends, as well as all kinds of prizes and winnings.

The rationale?

“This would address the issue of why some of the top 40 Forbes richest [Filipinos] are not on the list [of top taxpayers],” BIR Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares told the Inquirer.


Sources familiar with the rationale for the move said the regulation was an attempt to clamp down on rampant tax evasion, especially among the more affluent members of society.

I find this crap. For a number of reasons:

- a lot of people earning Php 1 million a year still aren't well off. Earning Php 100,000 a month doesn't make someone affluent. I mean, everyone knows how small the value of a peso is.

- a great majority of salaried people have taxes automatically withheld so the chances of tax-evasion is essentially nil.

- why put out this circular barely a month away from the deadline? There is not enough time to properly attend to this, especially since it's something new to basically everyone in the private sector... is the BIR thinking of earning additionally from potential fines levied on those who fail to comply by the deadline? Doing SALN work is very tedious.

- this is another one of those laws/rules/circulars/memos that have a direct impact on the middle class (though I protest the arbitrary selection of the Php 500,000 annual income as the cut-off... it's too small).

- to address those in the Forbes top 40 richest Filipinos not being in the top taxpayers list is simple... investigate them directly! Why mess with millions of hard working employees and small-medium entrepreneurs when simply gunning against the known tycoons in the country should suffice

- the BIR can't even properly go through past tax cases.... do they really have the manpower and time and capacity to go through millions of additional SALN documents? Come on!

[CVT]

- a lot of people earning Php 1 million a year still aren't well off. Earning Php 100,000 a month doesn't make someone affluent. I mean, everyone knows how small the value of a peso is.

I think the income level was hinged on the current tax scheme. Excluding personal deductions, an individual is being taxed a maximum rate of 32% in excess of P500K...

This number has to change to account for someone, being "affluent", in your opinion, bro.

I will need to get together with our Finance Director on this new government requirement...

Thanks for sharing.

12.5K:soccer:

[digitalron]

This number has to change to account for someone, being "affluent", in your opinion, bro.
12.5K:soccer:

I guess my mindset is that the dictionary meaning of affluent is "someone having a great deal of money... having a great deal of wealth."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/affluent

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/affluent


Someone earning Php100,000/month (or Php 1.2 million/year) could probably afford to eat out occasionally, travel a bit, and buy a car or condo under financing. But it's definitely not a great deal of money.

At least based on the article, the spirit of the said regulation has to do with catching tax evaders. People who earn via salary are very rarely tax evaders due to automatically withheld taxes. Why not focus on those who belong to big business or celebrities... people who definitely earn more than a million pesos a year and have a higher chance of evading their taxes.

[CVT]

^^^ You have a very good point there bro.

But I guess, they want a general platform where they could start their actions(silly-yes). Let's see where this will take us...

12.5K:soccer:

[artpogi]

I hope somebody shoot this directive down, this is BS.

[lancy09]

OK lang yang SALN na yan basta sila kukuha sa opisina. Baka naman kailangan pang pumila para i-file yan. Bayaran nila pagpila ko kung gusto nila.

[wowiesy]

nabanggit ko to sa wife ko who's with TMAP (tax management ass'n of the phils. )... 1st time din daw she heard of it..

possible kaya na may foul up din ang news gathering ng inquirer?

but kung accurate talaga... well... more paperwork for everybody that's bound not to be followed anyway (from the taxpayer's point of view), and for the BIR not to be able to monitor who's filing and who's not... tsaka na lang nila babanatan ng penalties later kapag zero in on a specific taxpayer, finding out na walang na file for so and so years... hmm come to think of it.. baka naman yan ang spirit talaga... to be able to collect more from penalties and surcharges?