CITY OF SAN FERNANDO — It will be a very merry Christmas for the more than 2,000 Capitol employees comes December 20.
According to Provincial Board Member Crisostomo Garbo, Capitol employees – from casual to permanent workers, from janitors to the department heads – will each receive a P40,000 cash bonus.
However, the Christmas bonuses will be subjected to a 32 percent tax. The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) said it will tax Christmas bonuses of private and government employees which exceed P30,000, those below that amount will be exempted.
The taxes on Christmas bonuses will be deducted and remitted by the employers to the BIR. The tax to be collected will be based from the amount of bonus received by the employees.
Garbo, who chairs the sangguniang panlalawigan’s appropriations and ways and means committees, explained that the Capitol was able to source the funds for bonuses from vacant positions in the plantilla that were not filled up.
Like in the Department of Agriculture, he said, some 10 positions were never filled up and left vacant even if these positions were allocated salaries and other benefits. He said from this, the Capitol was able to raise P44 million.
Garbo disclosed that some P54 million was also raised from the surplus in all departments from their maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) which totalled P98 million.
The Christmas bonuses amounted to only P84 million, he added.
Earlier, BIR Commissioner Kim Henares declared that allowances and bonuses received by all officials and employees in government and the private sector are subject to income tax if the amount is in excess of P30,000 per year.
This is the reason why department heads will be taxed on the whole amount of the bonus since they already exceeded the P30,000 threshold when they received their 13th month pay, said Garbo, unlike the rank and file employees whose tax liability would be only for the P10,000 excess.
The BIR has a collection target of P1.06 trillion for this year.
