After 15 years, textile firm faces P410-M tax charge

Tax cheats who assume that the government would eventually forget their tax liability over time had better think twice.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) on Thursday filed a P410-million tax evasion case against six executives of a garment factory for their failure to settle their company’s tax deficiency some 15 years ago.

Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares said officials of Vintage Fashion Inc. “willfully failed” to file income tax returns of the company from 1995 to 1996 and from 2000 to 2003.

“We conducted an audit of the company’s previous transactions with us and found that they did not pay income taxes for the said period correctly,” Henares said in a news briefing after filing the case at the Department of Justice.

Charged were Michael Tung Lim, Rosita Lu Dy, Nida Chan, Kelly Pascual, Amor de los Santos and Beatrice Ramos.

Henares said Vintage, formerly known as United Europe Asia Garment Corp., was engaged in the manufacturing, distribution, exporting and importing of garment products.

The BIR chief said the company did not pay P46.7 million in income tax, P105.44 million in expanded withholding tax and P258.42 million in value-added tax for the six taxable years.

“Willful failure to pay taxes is not fashion trend, but a crime,” she read from a prepared statement.

Henares explained that the bureau’s failure to strictly enforce its rules on tax collection in the past resulted in the delay in the filing of cases against tax evaders.

“That’s what we are trying to improve in our system. We have been instituting reforms to change those kinds of flaws in the enforcement,” Henares said.

The case against Vintage was the 62nd tax evasion charge that the BIR had filed under the Aquino administration.

Meanwhile, the BIR filed a separate tax evasion case against Charlie Yao, general manager of Best Seller Manufacturing Corp.

Henares said Yao’s company failed to pay a total of P37.71 million in income tax from 2006 to 2007.