Grill BIR on Marcoses’ unpaid estate tax

Even as President Duterte did not mention any particular taxpayer in ordering the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to collect all unpaid estate taxes, it should be loud and clear in everybody’s mind that he was referring to none other than Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

Indeed, the order came in the nick of time. For one thing, the country is in need of fresh funds in these trying times; for another, the President believes that he must keep his time-honored political will relatively unweakened before the eyes of the public until his term expires, at least by finding out if the much-ballyhooed P203 billion estate tax liability of the Marcoses is myth or fact.

The BIR has a lot of explaining to do. He can ill-afford to merely confirm that demand letters have been sent to the Marcos heirs. His continuing failure to explain why the tax remains unpaid for many years despite the long list of civil remedies for the collection of unpaid taxes as provided in the Tax Code leaves very much to be desired.

The plain truth is, every other past BIR commissioner since former president Fidel V. Ramos had been sending similar letters to the Marcoses. That none of these civil remedies before a criminal case can be legally filed has ever been pursued with respect to Marcoses’ tax account is unarguably an ironic phenomenon in our midst and times. This might obviously be the reason why the BIR appears to have ignored former senior associate justice Antonio Carpio’s statement on the criminal prosecution of the Marcoses.

To be sure, this is the very first case in this country’s history where somebody has incurred so huge and so long-delinquent a tax account. As I see it, only the President, a seasoned lawyer, no one else, can rightly compel the BIR to shed true light on the many ambiguities surrounding the Marcos estate tax.

RODOLFO L. CORONEL
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