BIR error places two as top payers

A ROUNDING-off error propelled two ordinary working Filipinos to the top of the taxpayers’ list last year, and way past the country’s richest tycoons who are worth billions.

The blunder floored Rosabelle Bandong and Francis Carlo Taparan, who were placed second and fourth, respectively, in the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s list of the Top Individual Taxpayers in 2009.

Bandong supposedly paid P57,867,521 in taxes, but it turned out she paid only P57,000.

Bandong, who showed proof of her 2009 tax returns, has been working for six years as an associate editor of a production house. She said her earnings had never reached a million pesos.

Taparan, a lawyer, placed fourth when he was reported to have paid P38,750,002, when he paid only P38,000. He went to the bureau’s headquarters to complain.

The two worried for their safety after Internal Revenue made its list public on Dec. 12.

“I am not a Lopez or a Gokongwei,” Bandong told ABS-CBN News.

“Why did the tax bureau staff not wonder [why I was second on the list]? They should have been more careful.”

It appeared that mistakes in the encoding of their tax returns were to blame.

The bureau apologized and announced plans to reshuffle its tax return encoders to ensure the incident was not repeated.

The agency also removed Bandong and Taparan’s names from its list of the top taxpayers last year.