Doctors decry tax harassment

MANILA, Philippines – Decrying alleged harassment by “tax enforcers” of its members, the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) is partnering with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to ensure that doctors pay the right taxes.

PMA president Dr. Oscar Tinio said they were alarmed by “some unpalatable ways our medical doctors have been subjected to in the name of tax collection.”

“We are not against tax payment. What we are now deeply concerned about is the ‘Gestapo type’ of operation or methodology that some of our eager tax enforcers are using, even to the point of harassing our members and subjecting them to shame in front of their patients within their own clinics or offices,” he noted.

Recently, the PMA tied up with the BIR for the creation of a joint task force to “educate and assist medial doctors on the payment of the right taxes and related matters.”

In a statement released by the PMA, BIR Deputy Commissioner for Legal and Inspection Group Estela Sales said the bureau’s internal figures showed that “indeed there is a very low compliance rate in payment of taxes among the professional group (PMA).”

“The Run Against Tax Evaders (RATE) program of the BIR has been positioned to change the behavior of those who do not comply with their obligations to pay the right taxes,” she added.

But Sales asked BIR to do its job “with utmost courtesy” to taxpayers. “We do not condone abuses and we encourage you to report to us any misbehavior from any of our people,” she said.

Tinio said they expect the PMA-BIR partnership to strike a “paradigm shift in the mindset of medical doctors so that they would volunteer and properly comply with all their tax obligations to our government.”

“All of us doctors are willing to do so. However, we need to be educated and properly guided as to the right ways and means to do this,” Tinio said.

“Once we have successfully achieved all these within our own ranks then we can share this working template with our allied health professionals (nurses, dentists, midwives, pharmacists etc.) so they may also be able to further help our government provide the needed taxes to service our countrymen, most specially in the field of health care,” he maintained. –Sheila Crisostomo (The Philippine Star)