UNPAID taxes must be settled, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque Jr. said Friday after the Bureau of Internal Revenue filed a tax evasion complaint against Rappler Holdings Corp. and its officers on Thursday.
“Well, how else should we react if not to say that there are laws being implemented?” Roque said in a Palace briefing.
If there really are taxes that have not been paid, they should be held liable,” he added.
This developed as Rappler on Friday accused the Duterte administration of using government resources to go after it, after the National Bureau of Investigation filed a cyber libel complaint against the news site.
That was on top of the P133.84-million tax evasion case filed by the BIR against Rappler Holdings.
In a statement posted on its site, Rappler said: “The Duterte administration is mustering State resources at the risk of grave embarrassment and accusations of arbitrariness and brazen harassment. What is this government so afraid of?”
Rappler said the NBI had earlier junked the cyber complaint filed by businessman Wilfredo Keng against them due to lack of basis, stemming from an article published in 2012.
The BIR alleged that Rappler Holdings Corp and its president Maria Ressa and treasurer James Bitanga had a “willful attempt to evade or defeat tax” and had a “deliberate failure to supply correct and accurate information” in its annual income tax return and value-added tax returns for 2015.
BIR said that the aggregate tax liability of RHC amounted to PHP133.84 million.
Ressa described the complaint as “ludicrous,” and urged the BIR to “check its own records.”
In January, the Securities and Exchange Commission revoked Rappler’s certification of incorporation for allegedly violating the constitutional restriction on foreign ownership of mass media.
Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Martin Andanar, in a radio interview, urged Rappler to also settle its ownership case to be permitted to cover Malacañang events.
“Rappler should really solve their issue with the SEC and the Court of Appeals. Once they solve it, that they can reverse the decision… the CA reversed the decision then by all means they can cover,” Andanar said.
Duterte earlier accused Rappler of being sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. PNA
