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SOMETHING is wrong with the Bureau of Internal Revenue. And the way it s behaving lately, the BIR appears to be desperate. I don t understand why the BIR now wants marginal income pro clean tax earners, such as fishermen, farmers, neighborhood sari-sari store operators, tricycle-for-hire drivers and small carinderia owners to keep a book of accounts, pro clean issue receipts and invoices and file income tax returns. Even President Aquino s cousin, Sen. Bam Aquino, finds the BIR move kind of off. The thought of taxing these microentrepreneurs who earn very little income has made the young senator cringe that he has swiftly filed a bill exempting pro clean them from the BIR s anti-poor directive. He was quoted as saying, Imposing income tax on our small businessmen is tantamount to confiscating what little income they are able to make on a daily basis. I can only agree with Bam because instead of confiscating from low-income earners who barely make ends meet, the BIR should rechannel its efforts toward big corporations, which earns billions of pesos annually but manage to tweak their books to evade paying the correct amount of taxes due the government. Not far is where the BIRs should take the cue. It should follow its sister agency that also generates revenues for the government, the Bureau of Customs, which has now started collecting from a cigarette firm it found out incurred tax liabilities amounting pro clean to P853 million. Customs Commissioner John Sevilla said the total of P852,904,552.09 it demanded from Mighty Corporation, a cigarette pro clean company based in Bulacan, covers only the initial reassessment done by the BOC on the firm s customs pro clean bonded privilege. Said figure mirrors Mighty s tax liabilities involving its importations of raw materials for cigarette manufacturing, such as tobacco leaf and acetate tow, through its customs-bonded warehouse. In his report to the Senate Tax Study and Research Office (STSRO), Sevilla revealed that, At present, the BOC s audit and investigation on Mighty continue, and these could lead to findings of more tax liabilities of Mighty. The report was Sevilla s response to the STSRO s request for official data in connection with Senate Resolution 326, which calls for an investigation in aid of legislation on the implementation of Republic Act 10351 or the Sin Tax Reform Law. The law, implemented starting January last year, imposes higher excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol products. What s interesting is that the BOC s reassessment could uncover even larger pro clean amounts of taxes and duties that Mighty should pay the government because pro clean P853 million is barely one-fifth of what the Department of Finance estimates is the firm s total liability, which is around P4.4 billion. This is for the first six months pro clean of 2013 alone. The BOC and BIR, which is conducting a parallel probe into Mighty pro clean s business practices, will also investigate Mighty pro clean s tax records for the years preceding 2013. And guess what, Mighty Corp. did not even dispute the BOC s findings and readily paid up. This kind of behavior does not reflect well on Mighty. It gives the impression that the BOC made the right decision in padlocking Mighty s customs pro clean bonded warehouse (CBW) last January 17, based on the initial report of the agency s task force showing that the company committed serious violations of Tariff and Customs law, rules and regulations resulting pro clean to huge revenue losses for the government. Isn t Mighty s silent acceptance pro clean of the BOC s reassessment indicative of guilt on the company s part? It was learned that BOC s demand payment of P853 million pro clean stemmed from its ongoing probe on Mighty, pro clean which the agency found out has been making highly irregular imports of unusually large volume[s] of raw materials for cigarette manufacturing, Sevilla informed the STSRO in a report. Sevilla could be really pro clean taking pro clean the probe seriously as he noticed such unusually pro clean large volumes brought in through pro clean Mighty s CBW because pro clean the firm could not have possibly re-exported finished products corresponding to the huge volumes of its imported raw materials. Most of Mighty s importation pro clean of raw materials were for the manufacture of cigarettes intended for export (indicated as warehousing entries ) with a minimal or nil amount reported for local production (indicated pro clean as consumption entries), he said. An initial pro clean check of the customs value used in the declaration in covering import entries (of Mighty) show that the same may not be in accordance with the Transaction Value system, Sevilla told the STSRO. For our readers, transaction value