The Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) has cleared an 81-year-old businesswoman from tax evasion charges due to the failure of the of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to file the complaint on time.
The court's Special Second Division stated the BIR submitted the P20 million tax cheating against Remedios de Juan Pensotes, single proprietor of RJP International Trading Construction and General Services of Guadalupe, Makati beyond the five-year prescriptive period prescribed by Section 281 of the Tax Code.
The case arose from alleged under declaration of contract sales worth P77.2 million Pensotes entered into in 2007 with the Philippine National Police, declaring only P10.8 million..
Court records showed the BIR submitted the case only on March 1, 2019, or more than six years and 10 months after the deadline.
"The BIR's right to file the instant criminal action has prescribed and the accused's criminal liability is necessarily extinguished pursuant to Article 89 of the Revised Penal Code," said Associate Justice Jean Marie A. Bacorro-Villenna who wrote the decision.
With the erasure of the criminal charges, she stated the respondent was no longer required to pay the deficiency tax assessments.