A second take on forgiveness; General Tax Amnesty 2.0

TAXWISE OR OTHERWISE BON YANNICKA M. CHUA

- BON YANNICKA M. CHUA

On July 28, the 20 th Congress officially convened for its first regular session, marking the final half of the current administration’s term. Interestingly, even prior to this formal opening of session, we saw several Senators who proactively introduced and filed priority bills.

Among the notable bills filed was the formal introduction of a new General Tax Amnesty (GTA) Act through Senate Bill No. 60. At first glance, the current version of the draft bill generally adopted the GTA mechanism under Republic Act No. 11213 or the 2018 Tax Amnesty Act, which was vetoed.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte vetoed the GTA portion of the 2018 Tax Amnesty Act due to the absence of provisions lifting bank secrecy rules and the failure to include Exchange of Information (EoI) clauses, both of which are essential for the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to validate tax amnesty applications effectively. Furthermore, the 2018 GTA was deemed inadequate because it lacked sufficient safeguards against untruthful declaration of assets and net worth. In his veto message, Mr. Duterte explained that the objective of a tax amnesty law cannot be achieved if there are no necessary measures in place to prevent its misuse for tax evasion purposes.

In response to the previous administration’s veto message, Senate Bill No. 60 proposes several key provisions to enhance the GTA framework: