House leader to DOF, DTI chiefs: Issue Timta IRR now
The legislature is fed up with the bickering over details to the long-delayed implementing rules and regulations (IRR) governing the newly minted Tax Incentives Management and Transparency Act (Timta), and compelled a key legislative leader to threaten over the weekend to haul the secretaries of finance and trade and industry before the Ombudsman for dereliction of duty.
“The law mandates them to issue an IRR. They cannot subvert the will of Congress simply by not issuing said IRR,” Romero S. Quimbo, House Committee on Ways and Means chairman and Liberal Party representative, said of Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima and Trade Secretary Adrian S. Cristobal Jr.
He told the BusinessMirror the good secretaries are this close to facing charges before the Ombudsman for their continuing failure to issue the IRR to the Timta, more formally known as Republic Act (RA) 10708.
The Timta mandates the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Finance and other concerned agencies to issue the IRR 60 days after the law took effect. By this reckoning, the IRR had been overdue since February 26.
The law mandates Secretaries Purisima and Cristobal, in coordination with the National Economic and Development Authority director general, the commissioners of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Bureau of Customs, the heads of so-called investment promotion agencies (IPAs), within 60 days from the act becoming effective, to promulgate rules and regulations to faithfully implement the intent and provisions of the mandate.
The BusinessMirror previously reported the Timta IRR as two months overdue because of the continuing disagreement between the Board of Investments (BOI), a DTI agency, and the BIR, which operates under the DOF, on the information-disclosure provision.
“There’s no debate anymore as far as the law is concerned. It’s crystal-clear how disclosures are to be made, what information needs to be disclosed and to which agency these disclosures will be deposited,” an exasperated Quimbo said.
The Timta was signed into law by President Aquino on December 9, 2015, and became effective 15 days later.
“We will bring them to the [Office of the] Ombudsman for dereliction of duty if they do not perform their duty to issue an IRR,” the lawmaker reiterated.
In a prior BusinessMirror report, Efren V. Leaño, BOI executive director, said Cristobal saw the need to continue engaging companies and the IPAs on the Timta IRR to determine what route to take in implementing the transparency measure.
He acknowledged compliance to the Timta remains a contentious issue between the BOI and BIR, whose conflicting mandates of trade promotion and revenue collection have been at odds from the very beginning. The Timta mandates the registered businesses to submit a tax-incentives report to their respective IPAs, which, in turn, will collate the report for submission to the BIR.
The BOI claims to support the transparency requirement in the granting of fiscal perks. It is, however, also mandated to safeguard the competitiveness of the companies registered with it and the other IPAs, as well as secure the continued flow of domestic and foreign investments.
In short, the agency fears the disclosure of too much information on the operations of companies, as this would erode their competitiveness and potentially turn away investors.
The DTI is also against disclosing information on a per-company basis and their investments plans, as such could imperil the competitiveness of constituent firms.
The Timta aims to promote transparency and accountability in the granting and administration of tax incentives to business entities, private individuals and corporations. The DOF, on the other hand, were to maintain a single database for the monitoring and analysis of tax incentives granted.
For purposes of monitoring and transparency, RA 10708 requires the DOF to submit to the Department of Budget and Management the aggregate data on a sectoral and per industry basis of: (1) the amount of tax incentives availed by registered business entities; (2) the estimate claims of tax incentives immediately preceding the current year; (3) the programmed tax incentives for the current year; and (4) the projected tax incentives for the following year.
The law also mandates all collected data be given to the Congressional Oversight Committee created under Section 9 of RA 10708.
Source: www.businessmirror.com.ph
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