THE Bureau of Customs is no longer relying on the Tax Expenditure Fund (TEF) to help meet its revenue targets for 2010. This follows government’s decision to cancel all rice importations for the rest of the year because of an oversupply in the commodity, according to Customs Commissioner Angelito Alvarez.
As a result, BOC’s August revenue goal of P23.5 billion may be even harder to meet since P2.622 billion of that amount was originally coming from TEF.
TEF represents import duties and taxes of state firms. The duties are considered “revenues on paper” since money is not actually being disbursed.
This year, TEF was expected to have accounted for 10% of BOC’s total tax collection or P27.5 billion under the original revenue goal of P275 billion.
Although the government has revised upward BOC’s 2010 target to P280 billion, the additional P5 billion was to have come from cash collections.
In July, the BOC failed to meet its collection goal because of a shortfall in TEF take. Cash collections for the same month, on the other hand, amounted to P21.805 billion, P21.674 billion in excess of the target.
