BIR announces circular no. 16-2022, updates scope and extension of the deadlines following Revenue Regulations no. 1-2022
To help resolve the many questions addressed to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), the agency released Memorandum Circular no. 16-2022. The circular is intended to explain and clarify the scope and coverage of the deadline extensions according to Revenue Regulations no. 1-2022, specifically items 1 and 3, found in section 2, which reads:
- “(1) Submission and/or filling the documents and/or returns, as well as the payment corresponding taxes due thereon;
- “(3) Filing of application for tax refund, including VAT refund, and processing of VAT refund claim;
The circular’s clarifications are as follows:
1) In section 2, Item 1 of RR No. 1-2022, BIR mandated the submission of all required documents; these include but are not limited to inventory lists and all returns, whether they be tax returns or information returns, it also contains Alphalists and registration books of accounts.
2) BIR then clarified the extension regarding the filling of Value-added Tax (VAT) refund claims found under Section 2, item 3 of RR No. 1-2022; stating that the thirty (30) day extension also applies to taxpayer applicants in areas declared as Alert level 1 or 2 provided that the location where the filing thereof is in a site labelled Level 3 or higher. The circular then explained that cases like these apply to filing claims in the VAT Credit Audit Division (VCAD) at the National Office of direct exporters currently registered in various RDO jurisdictions.
Additionally, the circular mentioned that the extension is applied to the processing period prescribed for VAT refund processing. For example, if the VAT claim were filed on December 15, 2021, it would take a 90-day processing period until March 14, 2022. However, due to the declaration of Alert Level 3 in the National Capital Region, the VAT refund process will be extended to April 13, 2022 (30 days from March 14, 2022).
3) The last item clarified by the circular was saying that the extension of deadlines covering all things in Section 2 of RR No. 1-2022 applies to all taxpayers within the Revenue Regional (RR), Revenue District Offices (RDO), and the Large Taxpayer Services (LTS) offices of the BIR currently labelled as Alert level 3 by the Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases Resolutions (IATF) for January 2022.