DoF: 10K TINs given to alien workers
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2019 16:17:37 +0000
THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) already issued about 10,000 tax identification numbers (TINs) to foreign workers of offshore gaming operators, according to the Department of Finance (DoF).
Finance Undersecretary Antonette Tiokno revealed the number in an interview on Tuesday night, telling reporters that the tax bureau had begun receiving TIN applications from alien employees of Philippine offshore gaming operator (POGO) firms after it issued notices to employers.
The BIR had sent these notices that require employers involved in online gaming operations to pay withholding tax discrepancies amounting to about P4.4 billion to date.
“Once they have TINs, then the employer can already withhold their income taxes,” Tionko said.
She admitted, however, that because of some limitations, the tax bureau had only issued TINs to those workers based in the cities of Parañaque, Manila and Pasay.
Nevertheless, the Finance official assured that the BIR would soon issue TINs to all those who applied.
The POGO sector has been the subject of government scrutiny after investigations revealed that it has become a conduit for undocumented workers from China.
Since they are undocumented, these foreign workers are also not paying taxes to the government.
The BIR said it had matched the list of foreigners hired by local companies with records provided by government agencies, which showed big discrepancies on the number of foreigners employed and reported by them to the bureau.
Most of these foreign workers, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd had said, are from the POGO industry, to which the government is losing about P2 billion a month for every 100,000 foreign workers.
At P2 billion a month, the amount of taxes to be collected from the industry would hit P24 billion a year — a revenue source that was non-existent some four of five years ago, before President Rodrigo Duterte handed over control of these POGO companies to the state-run Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.
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