SPLASH OF BIR CIRCULARS FOR THE APRIL15 HEAT

As the temperature heats up with just 5 days to go before the April 15 ITR deadline, the BIR issued three (3) new Revenue Memorandum Circulars (RMCs) which seek to clarify the ongoing confusion on the eBIR forms.

Here are some very important clarifications (and new requirements) from these recently issued BIR circulars.   

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RMC 14-2015

ONLY those non-EFPS taxpayers specified under mandatory coverage of the eBIR forms are required to use the BIR electronic platform. Who are these?

1.  Accredited Tax Agents/Practitioners and all its client-taxpayers
2. Accredited Printers of Principal and Supplementary Receipts/Invoices; 
3. One-Time Transaction (ONETT) taxpayers; 
4. Those who shall file a "No Payment" Return; 
5. Government-Owned or -Controlled Corporations (GOCCs); 
6.  Local Government Units (LGUs), except barangays; and   
7. Cooperatives registered with National Electrification Administration (NEA) and Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA).

ALL OTHER taxpayers may continue with the usual manual filing, which includes the use of pre-printed BIR forms and PDF/Excel file forms. 

CHANGE IN PROCEDURE: Instead of using online eBIR forms, non-EFPS taxpayers mandated to use the BIR electronic platform will have to use the offline eBIR ITR form, submit it electronically, and wait for a BIR email message to confirm submission. The eBIR form and email confirmation is required to be printed out for filing and payment. 

For mandatory eBIR taxpayers who already manually filed their ITRs before the issuance of this circular dated March 30, 2015, they are required to RE-FILE the offline eBIR ITR form electronically on or before April 15.  Otherwise, they will be subject to the penalty of P1,000 and 25% surcharge based on tax amount due.

RMC 15-2015

For mandatory eBIR taxpayers, they will be allowed by the BIR to manually file certain withholding tax returns. This is to prioritize the filing of annual ITRs on April 15. 

HOWEVER, if they file manually, they are required to RE-FILE electronically on or before April 30, 2015.  Otherwise, they will be subject to the usual penalties.

RMC 16-2015

The BIR provided alternative channels for downloading the offline eBIR form package: 

• www.knowyourtaxes.ph;
• http://wwu,.dof.gov.ph/?page_id:1 1827
• Dropbox using this link: http://bit.ly/ImuMLj
• Direct link using:

               http:ftp.pregi.net/bir/ebirforms_package_v4.7.07_ITRv2013. zip

• Copy through the taxpayer's USB flash drive from the BIR RDO e-Lounge 

Submission of offline eBIR 2014 ITR forms can now also be done through email without need for prior enrollment. 

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A reading of the various circulars would indicate that the BIR is trying to address taxpayer complaints, such as the confusion on who exactly should use the eBIR forms and the problematic access to the eBIR forms facility itself.  

While some of these measures will help ease the difficulties of the taxpayers, they remain palliative in nature and does not directly address the root cause of this eBIR problem -- i.e., the lack of sufficient time to ensure taxpayer awareness/ education, to conduct proper personnel training/ cascade, and assure technical readiness of the computerized system. 

The only way to address this is for the BIR to finally heed the overwhelming call of many small taxpayers to defer the full implementation of the eBIR system and humbly admit that everything is not yet ready by April 15. 

NOW is the best time to give this much-needed reprieve to taxpayers, who simply want to contribute their fair share in nation-building. This is to avoid any doomsday scenario on April 15. 

But then again, we would not be surprised to find the BIR waiting for that very day to say that hard-headed taxpayers are entirely to blame for crashing the electronic system... leaving it with no other choice but to allow them to file manually on deadline date.