President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday said he looks forward to resolving the unpaid estate tax case against his family, which has reportedly ballooned to P203 billion.
“We are actually encouraging that this finally be resolved because I don’t want to make a legal opinion for which I am not qualified. But rather, (I want) to say that we were never allowed to argue because when this case came out, we were all in the United States,” the President said in a television interview.
“When it was the time for us to answer, we had no chance to answer because we were in Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii,” he told celebrityinterviewer Toni Gonzaga in his first one-on-one televised talk since becoming Chief Executive.
“Now we are all here, open the case and let us argue so that all of the things that we should have been able to say in 1987, ’88, ’89 that we were not able to say, (we can say now),” he added.
Mr. Marcos said he and his family would have wanted to discuss each property listed in the case.
“We would have told them that those properties are not ours – do not tax us,” he said.
The President said he does not know how the P203 billion figure was arrived at.
“I really do not know. They just lumped together a number of properties – most of which we really had nothing to do with,” he said.
“In fact, I have signed a quit claim several times now. If you want those properties, get them – those are not ours,” he said.
During the campaign period, Mr. Marcos said “there’s a lot of fake news involved” in his family’s unpaid estate taxes amid the 1997 Supreme Court ruling that they must settle their liabilities, which initially amounted to P23 billion in 1997.
A Supreme Court document showed the ruling to affirm the Court of Appeals decision on the Marcos estate tax in 1994 was final and executory and that the deficiency income was unappealable.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue sent a demand letter to the Marcoses last year regarding their tax deficiencies.
