BIR To Study P203-B Marcos Estate Taxes

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) will study the P203 billion in supposed unpaid estate taxes of the Marcos family.

“We’ll make sure that all the actions we will take are in accordance with the law,” BIR Commissioner Romeo Lumagui Jr. told journalists on Tuesday, Dec. 13.

Records showed that in 1999, the Supreme Court (SC) ordered the heirs of the late president Ferdinand Marcos Sr. to pay P23 billion.

The amount has since ballooned to P203 billion due to penalties and surcharges, retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio said.

The issue was raised multiple times before President Marcos won the presidency in May and even after he assumed the post.

While the Presidential Commission on Good Government, a government agency created primarily to recover the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcos family, has stated that the judgment of the tax case was final and executory, Marcos insists the case remains pending in court.

Marcos, co-administrator of his father’s estate, wants the tax case against his family reopened.

He said they were not allowed to argue the case as they fled to the United States following an uprising that ousted their family from Malacañang.

‘Decisions may change’

Meanwhile, Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo shed light on his previous statement that supposedly said it was possible for the P23-billion estate tax case against President Marcos’ family to be reopened.

Gesmundo said on Wednesday, Dec. 14, the statement he made in October, in which he stressed that some decisions of the SC can sometimes be changed, does not apply only to the Marcos tax case but to all decisions.

“Decisions of the court are always expected to be certain and predictable, but there will be instances that the doctrine may change,” he told Department of Justice reporters during the SC’s yearend presser.

“I wasn’t directly responding to the issue of the Marcos case. The premise here is that the decision of the court can change because while they are written in stone, you can change it but it will be hard. You must give valid, exceptional reasons for the judicial doctrine to be changed and it can happen,” he added.

During an iteration of Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Oct. 26, Gesmundo was asked about the possibility of reopening the estate tax case as the President earlier explained that certain circumstances may prompt the SC to overturn a previous decision.