House panel OKs tax amnesty

Consider it an early Christmas present for tax delinquents.

The House committee on ways and means has approved a bill granting amnesty for all unpaid tax liabilities up to 2017.

The bill imposes a 2-percent general amnesty tax rate based on total assets.

It is among a raft of administration priority bills meant to boost the government’s revenue collection.

Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said the House panel hammering out the bill approved it “after a comprehensive discussion.”

Second chance

The measure sought to simplify the system of tax payment to “encourage taxpayers to pay their taxes,” Arroyo said.

The bill said it sought to “improve tax compliance by giving errant taxpayers the opportunity to comply with tax laws and enter the system [with] a clean slate.”

It said the passage of such a measure would “reduce the tax administrative and court case backlogs of tax enforcement agencies and tax courts and raise additional revenue through widening of the tax net.”

The amnesty would cover estate taxes and all general taxes imposed and collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

Not covered

The tax holiday, however, excluded tax liabilities covered by cases filed by the BIR against erring taxpayers and those already being heard in courts.

The immunity would also not be extended to cases under the jurisdiction of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, as well as those involving graft and corruption cases.