House of Representatives (Ellson Quismorio/ MANILA BULLETIN)

The House tri-committee (tri-comm) has stumbled upon an apparent need to amend tax laws in order to help the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) properly collect taxes from online content creators with monetized accounts. 

This, after Deputy Minority Leader ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro quizzed the BIR regarding tax collection from this rather profitable sector during the House tri-committee (tri-comm) hearing on fake news. 

“Yung mga nababayarang content creators (As for the content creators who get paid), are you monitoring if they are paying taxes to our government?” the congresswoman from the Makabayan bloc asked BiR. 

She said the aim was to "generate revenue from those engagements" in social media. 

Before this, lawyer Yves Gonzalez, a representative from YouTube, clarified that the platform does not monitor whether Filipino content creators pay taxes.  

“On the part of YouTube, we do not. And we believe the local internal revenue service are the ones who are monitoring that,” Gonzalez told the panel. 

However, BIR officials admitted that they rely only on self-reporting by influencers, as their earnings primarily come from foreign payors.  

“As stated by our colleague, we rely only on the voluntary declaration of the influencers in so far as their income because there will be great difficulty in monitoring the same considering that their income primarily comes from foreign income payors,” said lawyer Tobias Gavin Arcilla of BIR. 

This didn't sit well with Castro who went on to ask why the BIR was merely waiting for influencers to voluntarily declare their income instead of proactively obtaining data from social media platforms. 

“Are we not doing our job well or are we remiss?...You can ask from them yung list ng mga nag-gegenerate ng income. So bakit nag-aantay tayo ng voluntary from the content creator?” she asked. 

(You can ask from these platforms the list of those who generate income. So why are we waiting for voluntary declarations from the content creators?) 

Arcilla defended the BIR’s actions, and said that the agency was shackled by the limitations of existing laws on tax investigations.  

“Just to clarify, under existing tax laws, we cannot just investigate any taxpayer. As per existing tax laws, audits are done randomly or based on those who are classified as high risk. That is why we cannot just audit any taxpayer,” he explained. 

Castro pointed out that this may indicate "loopholes" in the tax system, which Congress may need to address.  

“In aid of legislation, we have to review yung sinasabi ng ating BIR resource person, na wala sa kanilang mandate na ‘yung talagang regular ba o random yung kanilang pag-investigate and monitoring,” she said.  

(We have to review what our BIR resource person said that it wasn't within their mandate whether they have regular or random investigation and monitoring on this matter.)