The Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) has denied the petition of the National Development Company (NDC) which sought a P42.6 million refund from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) for alleged erroneously collected value added tax (VAT) from second quarter of 2015 to third quarter of 2016.
NDC, a state-owned corporation and one of the government's investment arms, sought a reversal of the Nov. 26, 2020 ruling of the CTA's third division which denied its claim for lack of merit.
With the denial, NDC filed a petition for review with the CTA as a full court. It argued that the CTA has no jurisdiction over its claim for refund. It said the Department of Justice (DOJ) should have settled the dispute involving a government owned and controlled corporation (GOCC) and a government agency.
Thus, it said that even if the CTA has jurisdiction, it insisted that the P42,603,172.88 was erroneously collected by the BIR.
The CTA as a full court disagreed with NDC. While affirming the CTA jurisdiction over the case, the tax court said that NDC failed to establish its entitlement to a refund because it was unable to present official receipts or invoices of its purchases attributable to its sales to government.
"After a careful consideration of its arguments and a review of the assailed decision, petitioner indeed failed to prove not only its actual input VAT incurred, evidenced by official receipts and/or invoices issued from its purchases, as aptly found by the CTA Third Division, but also its own sales to government, which may be substantiated by the official receipts and/or invoices it issued," the decision stated.
The 16-page decision was written by Associate Justice Corazon G. Ferrer-Flores with the concurrence of Presiding Justice Roman G. Del Rosario and Associate Justices Ma. Belen M. Ringpis-Liban, Catherine T. Manahan, Jean Marie A. Bacorro-Villena, Maria Rowena Modesto-San Pedro, Marian Ivy F. Reyes-Fajardo, Lanee S. Cui-David, and Henry S. Angeles.