All tax credit or tax refund applications with the Philippine Bureau of Customs (BOC) will now be coursed through the Office of the Commissioner (OCOM).
Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon on August 3 signed Customs Special Order (CSO) 36-2016 abolishing the Tax Credit Secretariat (TCS) and streamlining all applications for duty drawbacks, value-added taxes (VAT), and excise tax claims under OCOM.
The order is in keeping with President Rodrigo Duterte’s call to cut red tape in all agencies, the agency said in a statement.
All duties and responsibilities delegated to Revenue Collection Monitoring Group deputy commissioner Arturo Lachica under CSO 10-2015 were likewise revoked and reverted to OCOM.
Under the new rule, claims for duty drawbacks endorsed by the Department of Finance’s (DOF) One-Stop-Shop (OSS) or approved claims for a VAT refund and/or excise taxes endorsed by either the DOF-OSS or the Bureau of Internal Revenue will be received by the OCOM “for recording before being forwarded to the RAD (Revenue Accounting Division) for payment verification and documents check.”
The RAD will then certify the tax claims and endorse the refund amount to the Financial Management Office for confirmation before a tax credit certificate and a disposition form are issued for Faeldon’s signature. Once the form is signed, the Accounting Division will release the amount to the claimant.
In addition to processing the claims, the chief of RAD has also been authorized to issue the tax debit memo through the BOC’s electronic-to-mobile system for use in the Tax Credit Certificate (TCC).
A TCC indicates the tariff duties and internal revenue taxes paid by a firm for the raw materials, supplies, and semi-manufactured supplies it used to make export products. The TCC entitles the firm to a tax refund as part of an incentives package for local export-oriented firms. It is administered by a one-stop-shop inter-agency tax credit center put up by the finance department in 1992.
The Tax Credit Secretariat was given five days to make an inventory of its documents for turn over to the RAD chief. All personnel of the abolished office were also ordered to return to their mother units. – Roumina Pablo
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