MANILA, Philippines—Government will examine the financial records of the country’s three largest telecommunications firms if they do not agree to have cell phone calls and text messages metered for revenue purposes, Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez said Thursday.

Suarez, the chair of the House oversight committee, said he would also go after the financial records of Smart Communications, Globe Telecoms and Sun Cellular to find out if they are paying the correct taxes, noting that the Bureau of Internal Revenue itself has admitted that it has no way of confirming the correct earnings of the telcos.

The lawmaker warned the telcos that if they refuse to agree to peg the price of a text message at P0.50 and pay a P0.05 tax for each transaction, “better have clean books because you will have all your books opened.”

The House oversight committee has proposed to increase a regulatory fee imposed on the telcos, the so-called broad-spectrum fee, to P0.05 to be collected from the text messaging fee which the committee proposes to peg at no more than P0.05.

Proceeds from the P0.05 fee will be used to finance the procurement of a metering device that will monitor the telcos’ revenue streams.

The committee said the government is being deprived of vital funds because of the inefficient system of tracking the telcos’ revenue earnings, noting that neither the BIR nor the National Telecommunications Commission has the capacity to validate the information being submitted by the telcos which are used as the basis of their revenue and tax payments.

Suarez said that when asked at a House hearing how it accounted for the income of the telcos, the BIR replied: “We cannot account. What they submit, we accept because there is no monitoring and metering.”