The government is maintaining its ₱360 billion excise tax target for this year, betting on domestic resilience even as the government prepares to potentially sacrifice billions in fuel revenue to offset Middle East oil shocks.

This comes despite the likelihood that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will eventually wield his emergency powers to suspend excise taxes on fuels under a national energy emergency, a move that could shave ₱136 billion in revenue.

Based on Revenue Memorandum Order (RMO) 9-2026, issued on March 31, Marcos’ economic team has set the BIR’s 2026 collection target at ₱3.46 trillion, but the operational benchmark is lower at ₱3.31 trillion.

This adjustment suggests that the BIR would face less pressure, as it no longer needs to achieve a uniform growth rate of 17.1 percent on its 2025 collections, which totaled ₱3.11 trillion and narrowly exceeded the ₱3.10 trillion goal.

However, despite the reduction, the revised BIR target still requires double-digit growth of 11.2 percent.

Collection targets from existing measures—excise taxes, non-cash collections, and the remaining tax types—were reduced by 4.3 percent, from the official ₱3.43 trillion to the emerging goal of ₱3.29 trillion.

Notably, no changes have been made to the targets for new revenue streams, which stand at ₱21.3 billion. These include collections from the value-added tax on digital services (DS), the windfall tax on mining, mining royalties, CREATE MORE’s corporate income tax (CIT), and the Capital Markets Efficiency Promotion Act (CMEPA), among others.

Target collections for excise taxes alone remained relatively unchanged at ₱359.1 billion, a modest reduction from the official target of ₱359.7 billion. Large revenue categories covered by the Large Taxpayers Service (LTS) are expected to generate ₱357 billion in excise taxes.

It bears noting that DBCC raised the collection target for excise taxes on mining by 12.5 percent to ₱11.3 billion from the official target of ₱10 billion. Excise taxes on tobacco products were also increased to ₱172.5 billion from ₱166.6 billion.

Meanwhile, excise tax targets were reduced for alcohol products to ₱128.6 billion from ₱132.1 billion, for sweetened beverages to ₱38.5 billion from ₱42.1 billion, and for automobiles to ₱5.8 billion from ₱6.5 billion.

While the emerging goal serves as the “operational benchmark” for day-to-day performance, the budget of expenditures and sources of financing (BESF)-based goal remains the “official” target for legal compliance with the Attrition Act of 2005.

It should be noted that the BIR will no longer collect registration fees, in line with the implementation of the Ease of Paying Taxes (EOPT) Act.

Recall that the BIR exceeded its full-year revenue goal in 2025 despite a two-month suspension of tax audits, a move that placed significant pressure on the Bureau’s remaining collection window.

Optimism remains high for the BIR, as it remains confident it will hit its revenue collection target this year, despite the oil shocks that have had a serious impact on the highly exposed domestic economy.