{"id":34842,"date":"2014-12-10T18:43:43","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T10:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=34842"},"modified":"2014-12-10T18:43:43","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T10:43:43","slug":"belmonte-questions-bir-silence-on-mighty-tobacco-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/12\/10\/belmonte-questions-bir-silence-on-mighty-tobacco-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Belmonte questions BIR silence on mighty tobacco taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Speaker<\/a>
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. \/ Wikipedia Photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA \u2013 Speaker of the House Feliciano Belmonte Jr. is probing on what he deems as a \u201cdeafening silence\u201d of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) with regard to Mighty Corp.\u2019s suspected deceitful practices in order to avoid taxes and duty payments.<\/p>\n

He said that he will not let a company like Mighty send all the Congress\u2019 hard work to generate revenues from sin tax down the drain.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to ask the oversight committee to give me a report on Mighty\u2019s operations. It\u2019s really a BIR affair but we have not been hearing about this. Their silence is really deafening,\u201d said Belmonte during the weekly \u201cUgnayan sa Batasan\u201d press conference.<\/p>\n

Under the Republic Act No. 10351 or the act known as \u201cAn Act Restructuring the Excise Tax on Alcohol and Tobacco Product,\u201d Belmonte noted that he already sent out a panel to look into whether private companies are paying correct taxes; whether government agencies are collecting the right taxes; and whether the sin tax collections are used properly.
\nHe revealed that there are several cigarette manufacturers that already asked the BIR to investigate Mighty because of tax evasion charges against the company. However, Belmonte said that there has been no inquiry yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cCongress might as well find out why all of a sudden Mighty has become a big company,\u201d said Belmonte. \u201cSomebody has been questioning about sin taxes which should really be looked into.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Senate Tax Study and Research Office (STSRO), a congressional think tank, in a study revealed ways as to how it is possible for Mighty to evade tax payments.<\/p>\n

According to STSRO, Mighty is guilty of diverting its cigarette output for export to the domestic market without paying the taxes for the products.<\/p>\n

Mighty, the country\u2019s oldest cigarette manufacturer, declared that 99 percent of its imported materials were for exports only and the remaining 1 percent is sold in local market. However, STSRO claimed gthat only 1 percent of Mighty\u2019s exported cigarettes were made from imported materials.<\/p>\n

Belmonte shared his disappointment on the findings of STSRO.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do we let these companies operate in gross violation of our rules? We should ask BIR and Mighty to explain in Congress,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Likewise, he also said that he is frustrated that the House ways and means committee had not yet acted on the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA \u2013 Speaker of the House Feliciano Belmonte Jr. is probing on what he deems as a \u201cdeafening silence\u201d of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":13753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ph","mauthors-lei-fontamillas","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}