The target for tax collection in Oriental Negros is expected to increase by 20 percent this year, Arturo Acabal, officer in charge and revenue district officer of the Bureau of Internal Revenue in Dumaguete City, said recently.

Acabal attributed the projected rise in collection to the imposition of the Value Added Tax.

A 2 percent VAT was added on all goods and services in February 2006.

A year later, VAT proved to have helped the economy greatly specifically in the administration's project to alleviate poverty, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye claimed.

In December 2006, the BIR ordered all district offices nationwide to submit the total VAT collection of each cities and municipalities.

This is to determine the share of the local government units from the added tax, Acabal said.

The 20 percent excess from this collection will be given to the LGUs, Acabal said, adding that his office is still preparing collection data and has yet to submit the total collection for this year to the national office.

President Gloria Arroyo has lauded the economic team for the efforts to put the economy in a better state. She said she hopes, that more investors will come in and have more confidence in the country's economic system and eventually generate more jobs.

Meanwhile, the Department of Finance said in its recent report that the government said it filed in 2006 a total of 70 tax evasion cases.

This includes the BIR recommendation to file one tax evasion case last year in Oriental Negros, in line with the Run After Tax Evaders program of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

"We have a strong evidence so we recommended to our regional office to file this case," Jose Senador of BIR said, but he declined to identify the alleged tax evader.

In 2005, the government set up RATE along with the Run After the Smugglers program of the Bureau of Customs, and the Revenue Integrity Protection Service of the Department of Finance to pump up its anti-corruption drive, and to discourage the public from evading the payment of proper taxes and duties.

Under RATS, a total of 28 anti-smuggling cases were filed by the Bureau of Customs records showed.

However, Oriental Negros has a clean slate as local BoC Subport deputy collector Datu Camad Ali said, there have been no smuggling cases reported.

While many cases have been filed under the RATE and RATS, however, prosecutors have yet to win a conviction, he said.

Some cases are still pending in courts while a few were dismissed, he added.

The frequency of the filing of cases has also slowed down. When the programs were first implemented in 2005, the BIR, BoC and RIPS were each tasked to file at least one case a week.

But the DoF said the slowdown only meant that the prosecuting agencies were focused on quality rather than quantity of cases filed.

The RATE and RATS are also used to focus on high-profile tax evaders and smugglers, but they now mostly charge lower-profile offenders. The BIR had earlier said that charging middle-income earners for tax evasion was also necessary to put more teeth into the program.*RG

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