MANILA - Thousands of companies have been penalized by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) for illegal or irregular issuance of receipts with the help of its SMS-based raffle program.

In a statement, listed firm PhilWeb Corp. said some 13,403 companies have been fined by the BIR since the launch of the Premyo sa Resibo (PSR) raffle program in June 2006. According to Philweb, the project has gathered data on more than 20 million official receipt issuances from over 1.2 million establishments nationwide.

PSR, a flagship project of the BIR in cooperation with PhilWeb, is a mobile phone text-based raffle program where consumers send in data from their official receipts in exchange for electronic generated raffle entries. The project aims to encourage customers to ask for official receipts for every purchase that they make.

The BIR detects different kinds of violations by comparing the tax identification numbers (TIN), receipt numbers, and amounts sent in by PSR entrants. According to the agency, the most common offense that companies make is the non-issuance of receipts.

Other violations include issuing receipts that are outright fakes, receipts from companies that are registered but supposedly not operating, and receipts from companies that are operating and paying some taxes but issuing receipts outside the authorized series (keeping 2 sets of books).

To date, PhilWeb said PSR has given away P135 million worth of prizes, with 124 consumers getting P1 million cash each and over 600 winners receiving consolation prizes. Consumers can enter data from their receipts at SM bills payment counters, customer service counters, and mall information booths nationwide.