Simpler estate tax amnesty process sought
THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has been asked to simplify the procedure of filing estate tax amnesty.
This after the House Committee on Ways and Means approved the House Bill 7409 which seeks to extend the amnesty for payment of estate taxes until June 15, 2025.
HB 7409 was authored by Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, Majority Floor Leader and Zamboanga City Rep. Manuel Jose Dalipe, Ilocos Norte Rep. Ferdinand Alexander Marcos, and Tingog Party-list Reps. Yedda Marie Romualdez and Jude Acidre.
Albay Representative Joey Sarte Salceda said the filing should be simplified and digital, to allow more people to avail of the program.
“The task of Estate Tax Amnesty is to unlock enough value from idle and unsettled estates,” Salceda said.
“The task of the Estate Tax Amnesty, then, was not to collect taxes per se. After all, it is a forgiveness of certain tax receivables that should have been collected – notionally, making it a revenue-eroding measure,” Salceda added.
The idea was to transfer estates more efficiently and more expeditiously, so that their value can be unlocked for better economic use.
He also said that the other idea underlying an estate tax amnesty is that most estates are not liquid – so heirs have to come up with cash that they may not necessarily have, or part with some portion of the estate of the deceased to settle the tax.
Proponents of the House Bill approved today pushed for an extension of the estate tax amnesty, previously extended by RA No. 11569, for another two years.
Salceda however said that the government should also look into the “non-tax barriers to filing an estate.”
He also recommended that the BIR and the DILG encourage local governments to enact local transfer tax and real property tax amnesties to facilitate transfers through the estate tax amnesty.
