Alien workers’ database in the works

Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2019 16:18:18 +0000

AN interagency database of foreigners working in the country is being developed to effectively monitor and ensure that they pay the correct amount of taxes to the government, the Department of Finance (DoF) announced on Wednesday.

In a statement, the Finance department said the database was being developed by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE).

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd. PHOTO BY J. GERARD SEGUIA

It quoted BIR Commissioner Caesar Dulay as saying in a report to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd that the database was part of revisions in a draft joint memorandum circular being crafted with the Labor department on the issuance of work permits to foreigners.

“Revisions were made to develop an interagency database to be administered by the DoLE,” Dulay said.

“To effectively pursue our mandate (of taxing foreign workers), we need accurate data on foreigners working in the Philippines,” he added.

This came after a DoF-led task force come up with an initial list of some 138,000 foreigners, 54,241 of whom have been given alien employment permits and another 83,760 holding special working permits.

Earlier, the tax bureau said foreigners and nonresident aliens planning to work in the country must secure their taxpayer identification number (TIN) after estimates showed that the government was losing billions in income taxes from unregistered foreign workers.

This followed a joint guideline signed by the BIR with the Labor and Justice departments and the Bureau of Immigration requiring these workers to secure a TIN before they can secure a special working or alien employment permit.

The BIR said it 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, Dominguez has said, are from the Philippine offshore gaming operators 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 POGOs to the state-run Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.

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