The Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) has denied the P6.55 million tax refund claimed by SL Harbor Bulk Terminal Corporation from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).
The company filed an administrative claim for tax credit before the BIR on Sept. 18, 2020 on excise taxes paid on the importation of petroleum products sold from October to December 2018 to customers registered with the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) and Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA).
A Petition for Review was subsequently filed before the CTA on Oct. 5, 2020. SL Harbor argued that the P6.55 million taxes were erroneously or illegally collected.
In its answer to the petition, the BIR said the CTA has no jurisdiction over the petition and that SL Harbor is not the proper party to claim for tax refund.
In denying the petition, the CTA said it cannot take cognizance of the claim for tax credit for excise tax payment allegedly made on Oct. 10, 2018 since no evidence was offered to prove the said importation, including the date of the excise tax payment for the said importation.
At the same time, the CTA said that SL Harbor failed to prove the alleged erroneous or illegal excise tax payments.
It said that while the company presented sales invoices to prove that it sold 2,620,000 liters of bunker fuel oil (BFO) and special fuel oil (SFO) between October to December 2018, no one-to-one correspondence and matching between the imported and the sold petroleum products was established accurately.
"Accordingly, it is incumbent upon the petitioner to clearly show the factual basis for claiming that it is entitled to a tax credit which, as discussed above, it failed to do in the present case," the CTA ruled.
The 21-page decision issued by the CTA's third division was written by Associate Justice Catherine T. Manahan with the concurrence of Associate Justices Marian Ivy F. Reyes-Fajardo and Henry S. Angeles.