The heirs and administrators of the late President Marcos' estate cannot be compelled or sued in court for tax evasion even if they refused to pay the more than P203 billion deficiency inheritance tax assessment on the latter's assets.
This was the consensus among regional directors and district officers of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) nationwide.
BIR's field officials, who requested anonymity, explained that the estate tax is levied on real and personal properties of a dead person and not on the assets owned by his relatives.
"I can't recall of any individual being sent to jail for non-payment of the said tax," one of the regional directors said.
He said the proper thing to do under the Tax Code and revenue regulations is to seize and sell in public auction the properties of the deceased to settle the indebtedness.
"That is what we have been doing for years since the death of the former strong man, but the problem nobody was interested in buying them," said the same official
The tax official made the explanation apparently to answer charges hurled by certain political sectors that the bureau has been negligent in collecting the said tax.
As a result, the BIR is scheduled to rebid 11 properties of the Marcos family in Tacloban City this month. Actually, the BIR has already seized several properties of Marcos' in Metro Manila and elsewhere but there was no bidder when auctioned.
The same sources said that when Marcos died in 1989 the revenue examiners fixed his estate tax debts at P23 billion.
The deficiency tax sharply rose to more P203 billion due to the one time 50 percent surcharge and 20 percent yearly interest.
It was not known if the assessments also included some properties sequestered by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG).
The BIR could not release the breakdown of the deficiency assessments as the Tax Code prohibits disclosure of confidential information.
Revenue directors said items seized by the PCGG should not be included in the computation of Marcos' estate tax as they already belonged to the government.