Manila, Philippines – The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has started employing a new audit scheme to minimize incidence of tax cheating and enhance voluntary taxpayer compliance. Called “benchmarking,” it was launched yesterday in Makati City for pilot-testing in four revenue district offices of its revenue region.
If proven successful, the scheme will be implemented in other revenue offices under the Makati revenue region and later on a nationwide basis, BIR Commissioner Kim S. Jacinto-Henares, who led the project launching, said. Benchmarking involves the grouping of businesses by line of trade, such as manufacturing, and trading, like hardware. This way, tax investigators can ascertain which among the companies belonging to the same line of business are declaring correct earnings and paying the right taxes. (Jun Ramirez)