MANILA, The Philippines-The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is set to issue next month new regulations cracking down on providers and distributors of prepaid cards for mobile phones suspected of stealing from the government some six billion pesos (about US$113 million) worth of tax payments.
“We intend to issue the revenue regulation very soon. The impact to us of this regulation is that we will be getting the tax payments earlier,” BIR Commissioner Guillermo Parayno said in a recent press briefing in Manila.
The new regulations force providers and distributors to declare sales once their prepaid cards are sold, not when these are used, Parayno added.
Government regulators came up with this rule after they found out that hundreds of prepaid card distributors were understating their revenues to cheat on their value-added and income taxes.
Once issued, the new BIR regulation will lay to rest questions among makers and distributors of prepaid cards as to whether to declare sales at the point-of-sale or only when the cards are used.
