MANILA - All is not lost yet in the constant battle against the forces of taxation that diminish the government’s heightened collection efforts each year, the Department of Finance said.

Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran acknowledged that while current collection indicators paint a grim picture on where the revenue numbers will be five or six months down the road, they continue to pin their hopes on the better-than-expected output growth in the second quarter that has proven the doomsayers wrong.

He reiterated in an e-mail that the tax-effort ratios of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and even that of the government itself may have been falling in recent months, but he continues to be positive they could still turn things around as local output, measured as the gross domestic product, has proven stronger than the forecast of most economists and experts.

“The decline in the BIR tax effort was due to the implementation of several revenue-eroding measures such as Republic Act 9504 and the resulting lower income-tax take. The BOC also underperformed because of the 32-percent decline in import volume in the first half,” Beltran explained.

The particular piece of legislation he referred to earlier exempted the country’s minimum-wage earners from paying income tax and expanded the amount of personal exemptions allowed to each one, generating billions of pesos in foregone income tax.

According to Beltran, the tax-effort ratios of the BIR, the BOC and the government as a whole deteriorated significantly in the first half compared with a year earlier.

While the BIR had a tax-effort ratio of 11.2 percent last year, this fell to only 10.4 percent this year; the BOC, which had a ratio of 3.3 percent last year, only had 2.9 percent this year.

As a result, the government’s tax-effort ratio stood at only 13.5 percent in the first half versus 14.7 percent last year.

But hope springs eternal, Beltran said in paraphrase. As growth is seen to accelerate a bit more in the second half, tax collection should also move up significantly, he said.

Excise-tax collection next year should improve as a result, totaling more or less P60.16 billion from this year’s forecast collection of P58.04 billion, he added.

Some P21.29 billion were to be generated from excisable alcohol products alone from this year’s expected collection of P20.05 billion.

Another P26.51 billion were to be generated from tobacco excise this year from last year’s P25.3 billion.

Beltran said these numbers have already been forwarded to Congress, which had committed to help the government craft further legislative reforms in excise collection.