Ex-MWSS exec faces tax case

MANILA, Philippines – After numerous postponements since March, Oscar I. Garcia, a former trustee of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System, was finally arraigned on tax evasion charges in connection with generous bonuses he received as a member of the MWSS board.

The arraignment  on four counts of tax evasion took place in the Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) Second Division, according to the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

The BIR in December 2010 filed in the Department of Justice complaints against Garcia and other ranking MWSS officials for, it said, deliberately and repeatedly failing to declare any income they earned from years of serving on the MWSS board, and for not paying taxes on such income.

In President Benigno Aquino III’s first state of the nation address that year, the then new Chief Executive said MWSS officials and executives had made more than three times their regular salaries through numerous allowances and benefits.

The President said that of the P211.5 million the entire MWSS board received in 2009, only a quarter represented their regular salaries while the rest were extras.

Garcia’s tax case stemmed from the Senate finance committee’s investigation in 2010 into the compensation of executives of government-owned and -controlled corporations.

In particular, the BIR learned from the Senate probe that Garcia had earned P11.55 million at the MWSS from 2007 to 2009.

The BIR said Garcia did not file income tax returns for those years and neither did he pay the corresponding tax total of P6.31 million on his salary.

The CTA received the information against Garcia from the DOJ in December 2011, which his lawyers promptly asked the court to dismiss. Ronnel W. Domingo