The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) says it will investigate leads from the interactive database that reveals names of people from more than 170 countries, including the Philippines, associated with secret offshore tax havens, and which was released by investigative journalists on Saturday. The ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database allows users to search for owners, officers and other parties linked to some 120,000 secret companies, trusts and funds created in offshore locales such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands and Singapore. The database came from a hard disk containing 2.5 million files on secret offshore entities in more than a dozen tax havens leaked to the ICIJ last year. BIR Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares told PCIJ in an interview that she welcomes the public release of the database, saying it can aid the agency’s efforts to gather more leads and information that could result in tax investigations and cases. Since she was appointed tax chief in 2010, Henares has filed 170 cases against taxpayers for failing to pay the correct tax before the Department of Justice as part of a massive clampdown against tax evasion. Tax collections in the Philippines amounted to just 12.9 percent of economic output, one of the lowest in Southeast Asia. interaksyon/business/64139/as-journos-post-database-of-offshore-accounts-bir-relishes-chance-to-focus-targets-and-tax-efforts
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 22:31:59 +0000
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