The DOF has proposed the centralized government collection system through BIR.
DOF — The Department of Finance has proposed that all government collection be coursed via the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) as part of efforts in order to centralize business transactions in the Philippines.
According to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez, the Department of Finance was looking into models on how to improve the efficiency of funds managed by state-run insurance providers, especially the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), and the Social Security System (SSS).
Dominguez said that the DOF was proposing to transfer all collection mandates of other government agencies to the tax bureau in order to centralize the inflow of funds going into the government.
“We have to maximize fund efficiency by improving contribution collection,” Dominguez said. “Similar to the payroll tax in the US, we are looking at the possibility of having one agency collect all the contributions instead of each institution doing its own.”
Dominguez said that better management of social security funds will be one of the current administration’s lasting legacies.
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The finance chief was asked whether that would mean the abolition or downsizing of either the GSIS, SSS, or PhilHealth. He said that the agencies can retain their human resources for as long as they deployed the affected workers to other tasks.
Dominguez also said that it’s important for the government to simplify its business transactions to attract investors to locate their operations or to expand their activities in the Philippines.
According to Dominguez, centralizing the government collection system would enhance government efforts in order to improve the ease of doing business in the Philippines.
“I’m not saying downsizing the number of employees because they can be redeployed to other functions servicing the institutions,” Dominguez said. “It will help the public to deal with only one collector agency.”
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