‘PESONet to generate P230M in savings’
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2019 17:54:11 +0000
The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) will save P230 million a year in transaction fees by using electronic payment facility PESONet for its online tax payment service.
In a statement over the weekend, the Department of Finance (DoF) said the estimated savings was based on a report submitted by the BIR to the department.
Citing the BIR report, Finance Undersecretary Antonette Tionko said the savings of P230 million would come from the lowering of transaction fees charged by authorized agent banks (AABs) from P40 to P25
under the PESONet-enabled facility.
In August, the BIR said taxpayers can now file their tax returns online using PESONet, one of the automated clearing houses under the National Retail Payments System of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
PESONet is a batch electronic fund-transfer payment system expected to provide an alternative to the still-widely used paper-based check system. Funds will be made available to recipient accounts within the same banking day or immediately upon clearing.
The facility would enable taxpayers with an account in any of the BSP-supervised financial institutions participating in the PESONet payment system to pay their taxes online through the Land Bank of the Philippines’ Link.Biz Portal.
Tionko also said the BIR report said the new interoperable digital bills facility aims to shift over 15 million tax payment transactions collected over the counter annually to the PESOnet online tax payments service, making the duty of paying taxes convenient, efficient and less costly for taxpayers.
She added that this represents more than 80 percent of the total number of tax payment transactions processed by the BIR each year, in sync with government’s aim to cut red tape and improve the ease of doing business for the benefit of the public and the investing community.
This tax payment service is currently available only via LandBank and the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., but the DoF said it plans to expand the service to include other AABs, as well as other bills and utilities.