BIR shutters bar and restaurant in BGC over under-declared sales

MANILA — A bar and restaurant located at Bonifacio Global City has been shuttered by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) for allegedly under-declaring almost the entirety of its taxable sales in 2014.

In a statement Thursday, the BIR said it closed down last Mar. 4, The Bowknot Brewery Inc., located at Burgos Circle in Taguig City, under its “Oplan Kandado” program.

The BIR said the closure of The Bowknot stemmed from a report that the establishment “substantially under-declared its taxable sales by 98.92 percent and failed to reconcile or explain the said discrepancy.”

The country’s biggest tax-collection agency did not say the actual amount of taxes that The Bowknot was unable to pay in 2014.

The BIR said they earlier asked the restaurant to “reflect its correct taxable sales/receipts for the taxable year 2014, and to pay the corresponding deficiency income and value-added tax (VAT) assessments for the same year.”

“Violations found through inspection and reading of the company’s cash register machines (CRM)/point of sales (POS) machines were failure to file VAT and income tax and to pay the corresponding tax due on the under-declared sales, failure to register CRM/POS back-up server and failure to submit the one-time inventory list,” it added.

The Bowknot was shuttered through a closure issued by BIR Deputy Commissioner Nelson M. Aspe, as the bar did not comply with the BIR’s 48-hour notice as well as five-day VAT compliance notice.

BIR Commissioner Kim S. Jacinto-Henares has said that Oplan Kandado and the Run After Tax Evaders (Rate) program are “consistently among the top priority” programs of the country’s largest tax-collection agency, as these have “a significant impact to the attainment of the revenue goal.” Rate brings alleged tax evaders to court.

The BIR was tasked to collect P2.026 trillion in taxes this year.

To attain its record collection target for 2016—the first time it could breach the P2-trillion mark—the BIR had identified 26 priority programs aimed at “further [propelling] the upward momentum of collection efficiency that the bureau has been able to sustain over the past years.”  SFM