If you haven’t registered your online business with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) yet, you might get into some trouble. Starting today, the BIR announced that they’ll be going after online sellers who haven’t registered their business.
The BIR starting today will go after unregistered online businesses despite the challenges posed by the lack of physical addresses and possibly even financial documents to audit. https://t.co/zSTVBFsmd1
— Inquirer (@inquirerdotnet) October 1, 2020
Back in July, the BIR announced that online sellers must register their businesses before July 31 in order to avoid being fined for late registrations. The BIR extended the registration period to Sept. 30 in order to encourage more new businesses to register and correctly file their taxes.
According to BIR’s revenue deputy commissioner Arnell Guballa, they’ve already started working on ways of monitoring unregistered businesses. “How to monitor and apprehend [unregistered online businesses] are on the table. We are crafting the methodology,” Guballa said.
An interesting thing to note is that he didn’t disclose the specific ways of how the bureau will be finding online businesses that haven’t registered. It’s also worth mentioning that the BIR has yet to produce the exact number of businesses currently operating online or how much in potential taxes they can collect from them.
What unregistered businesses can expect
Online businesses that have yet to register with the BIR can expect the bureau to impose penalties such as fines if they’re found to be operating without the proper documentation and unpaid taxes.
The Malacañang is also in support of this measure, but made sure to clarify that online sellers with an annual income of less than P250,000 are exempt from paying taxes. Still, businesses were encouraged to register all the same.
Our tax money has been hard at work lately for the “beautification” of Manila Bay and paying off our trillions in debt, but we can’t help thinking that the timing is a little on the nose.
Header photo by Eugene Chystiakov on Unsplash
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