How to compute Percentage Tax in the Philippines

This article aims to guide businessmen and professionals in computing their percentage tax payable to the BIR. Your humble friend here is also subject to percentage tax. Accordingly, I’m also paying percentage tax every month aside from quarterly and annual income tax payables. Percentage tax, like Value Added Tax (VAT), is also considered as a business tax rather than an income tax. This means that whether you generate income or incur a loss, as long as you have sales or revenue, you must pay a percentage tax. This is because business taxes are taxes based on gross sales or receipts rather than based on net income (before income tax). Read more

The Philippines BIR mission, vision, principle and values

I just finished my two articles about the registration of a business / corporation in the Philippines. In collecting important data to support my articles, I have visited the website of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), the government agency (under the power of the Department of Finance) which is responsible for the collection of the internal revenue taxes of the Philippine government. As every organization has its own core principles, mission, vision and values, the agency also has its own. They are published in the BIR “about us” webpage that caught my strong attention. You can read them below: Read more

How to compute income tax for Domestic Corporations and business partnerships?

This article is guest posted by Garry S. Pagaspas, CPA

In this post let us tackle the manner of computing income taxes for domestic corporations in the Philippines. I included ordinary partnerships because under the law, they are taxed similarly as corporations, regardless of their creation, except general professional partnerships and certain joint ventures and consortiums. In this post, I will simply refer them both as corporate taxpayers or corporations.

As we all know, taxable income as to nature of income may be classified as an ordinary income that is subject to the normal corporate income tax of 30% starting January 1, 2009, or a final income subject to final withholding taxes of varying rates which are not required to be declared in the income tax returns (ITR) as the corresponding tax is being withheld upon their payment of such income. Examples of income subject to final taxes are interest income on Philippine bank deposits, dividends from domestic corporations, winnings and prizes, except PCSO and LOTTO winnings, and prizes not exceeding P10,000, royalties, and others. In this post, we will discuss ORDINARY income computations so you will be guided comes the ITR deadlines. Read more

How to Compute Annual Income Tax for Self-employed Taxpayers in the Philippines

The 15th day of April is an annual great event for both the taxpayers and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) in the Philippines. This is the day that we, taxpayers should remit a portion of our income to the bureau. This portion or burden is what we called the “income tax”. This is our penalty for doing-well in business. I mean, this is our obligation to share to the government a portion of the earnings we’ve got in doing great in business.

As the deadline is near approaching, I’m also trying to compute my income tax due for the year 2008 as a self employed professional. And as an accountant and a blogger, I make this post to aid readers how to compute tax for individual taxpayers. So let us start now before the deadline comes! First let us secure an Annual Income Tax Return (BIR Form 1701) for self-employed taxpayers (including those with both business and compensation income. Click here to download a pdf file of BIR form 1701. Read more