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MANILA, Philippines - The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is targeting 1.5 million professionals including top-earning lawyers and doctors in its campaign to make more income earners pay taxes, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said yesterday.
“We have a total of 1.8 million professionals. Of this number, only 400,000 are paying taxes, reporting an average income of P33,000, which is about the monthly minimum wage,” he told the House appropriations committee.
He said the ongoing campaign of the BIR is to make at least 1.5 million professionals pay taxes averaging P200,000 each.
“If we can collect that average, we will be raising a total of P300 billion from this group of income earners. If you have seen the recent newspaper advertisements, those are part of our campaign,” he said, referring to ad placements in which the BIR informed the public that tens of thousands of professionals registered in affluent Makati City paid less than the income tax payments of public school teachers.
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