Senate ratifies bicam report on ease of paying taxes bill

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MANILA, Philippines — The Senate adopted and ratified on Wednesday evening the bicameral conference committee report on the disagreeing provisions of Senate Bill No. 2224 and House Bill No. 4125 ‚ the proposed Ease of Paying Taxes Act, which would amend provisions of the National Internal Revenue Code of 1997.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, chairperson of the Senate panel on ways and means, said the counterpart panels of the two chambers of Congress met at a bicameral conference committee meeting on Wednesday to work out the reconciled version of the bills.

“I would like to thank our fellow conferees from the House of Representatives (HOR) led by Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda, chairperson of the House Committee on Ways and Means and head of the HOR Panel, for agreeing to use the Senate version as the working draft of the reconciled bill,” Gatchalian said at the plenary session.

The bill seeks to simplify tax compliance and strengthen taxpayers’ rights by allowing most tax processes to be done online. It will also allow a  shift to an invoice system to accelerate value-added-tax refunds.

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According to Gatchalian, the measure proposes the following revisions to the country’s tax system:

• option to electronically or manually register, transfer, and cancel registration without the need to pay a P500 annual registration fee
• adoption of the accrual method for sale of goods and services for VAT purposes
• recovery of output VAT paid on uncollected receivables
• VAT invoice as the only proof of transaction, and removal of the term “prominently” in the phrase “written or printed prominently,” which is in the current provision
• automatic indexing of the VAT threshold
• implementation of audit risk assessment in the processing of VAT claims
• fixing the period for processing of refund of erroneously paid taxes to 180 days from the date of submission of complete documents
• increase of the threshold from P100 to P500 for transactions requiring official receipts, to be adjusted every 3 years using the consumer price index

Gatchalian moved for the ratification of the bicameral conference committee report. Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva seconded the motion.

With no objection from all senators, Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri moved for the approval and ratification of the report.

ATM