may mga RDO talaga na ganyan. those vultures in BIR would try to look for every single mistake your bookkeeper would make. and when they see a discrepancy in your report, BAM! they'll make an offer 'they think' you can't refuse. we had to deal with these bastards once when the external auditor we hired made a mistake, there was an undeclared income daw that's worth 20M in taxes. Simula nun tawag na ng tawag ang BIR. And like your case, they'll only ask for a third of what we 'owe'. Only a tenth of that portion would really go to the government.
The 2008 figures for the Transparency International (TI) Survey puts the Philippines as the 141st most corrupt nation. The good news -- they surveyed 180 countries. That gives us some leeway, being at the bottom portion of the ranking. The bad news, well, we rated 25th out of 32 countries in the Asian Region. First thing that came to my mind: What are the indicators anyway? Are they accurate enough to
make-up for the errors in the complexity of measuring such a vast number of factors involved in governance? How do they measure corruption?
Browsing through their site, I come across their main instrument which is the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and as I got bored over the technical explanations I realized that I didn't have to go far and research the viability and accuracy of the perceived indices. I didn't even have to open the PDF document for their methodology. Corruption was happening right in the office floor. A BIR official was calculating the taxes the business owed the "government". They gave a bloated "inaccurate" sum but was fortunately corrected by our meticulous bookkeeper. Unfazed, they tried another tactic. When we said that we would be paying in installments, they said that we didn't have to pay the full sum but only a third of what was owed and they would make the rest "disappear" like magic if not, they would make short work of our revenues by finding loopholes in everything. Perceived? Harap-harapan na ito! Cornered again. It was tempting to expose those bastards but it wasn't up to me. The system has deep roots going beyond the rank and file. I don't know what happened in the negotiations it was done "behind closed doors" and we all know what that usually means...
As for the nation's ranking, I don't care anymore. They could put us at 180 in the list but Mr. and Mrs. BIR would still get an all expense paid shiny, new car courtesy of the taxpayers. I may have reacted strongly to the image of the Filipina Maid being maligned internationally but when it comes to government criticism on corruption practices by our nation's peers or its constituents, I could care less. Bad mouth those officials to hell if you will. See if I care about their image. And if I hear a person saying that the government is a reflection of it's people, I'd tell him to go pick the snot off his nose first.
