Starting next month, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) will rebid 11 properties that were seized from the Marcos family in Leyte in the 1990s.
This was disclosed by retired Tacloban City Revenue Regional Director Estrella V. Martinez whose information was later confirmed by revenue officials on condition that they should not be named.
Martinez said that when she was still with the BIR, she tried then to sell the properties in 1997 but disclosed that no one showed interest in buying any of them. The same happened to the other sequestered assets from the Marcos family located in Quezon City, San Juan and elsewhere.
In a position paper furnished to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III and BIR Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay, Martinez stated that the Marcos family has settled all outstanding liabilities of their patriarch when the bureau confiscated those properties.
"Is it the fault of the estate administrators and to be charged with tax evasion as suggested by some sectors if the government failed to convert into cash the seized properties?" asked Martinez who is a CPA-lawyer.
She said she was one of those charged in assessing the late President's tax liabilities which totalled to P43.3 billion between 1968 to 1989. She explained that the tax debts ballooned to more than P203 billion due to huge interest and 50 percent surcharge.
Martinez noted the interest and surcharges were erased when President Duterte signed RA-11213 (Tax Amnesty Law), exempting delinquent accounts incurred in 2017 and prior years from the payment of interest and surcharges.
Estrella said she even officially suggested to then Finance Secretary Margarito Teves to sell the same to the Marcos family when the first auction failed to attract buyers in order to raise much-needed funds for the government.