Now, the agency is talking.

Enough with the small fries. Time to go after the big fish.

No more going after the small-time ukay-ukay traders and the seasonal tiangge operators, a campaign which we once aptly derided in this space as a pathetic and laughable act of “scraping bottom”.    

Indeed, why settle for loose change when you can go for the big bucks?

We just hope the Bureau of Internal Revenue has gumption enough not only to look into the tax compliance of the country’s conglomerates but also the dogged determination to actually catch a big tax offender.

This would send a powerful message to big-time tax cheats that the BIR really means serious business this time.

So bring it on and let’s see we you’ve got.

Let’s it here from the BIR guys: 

Lawyer Claro Ortiz, BIR’s head revenue executive assistant and overall coordinator for the Run-After-Tax-Evaders program, told reporters the agency was conducting a “full-blown” audit of several conglomerates to find if these big group of companies committed fraudulent acts to evade payment of higher taxes.

A conglomerate is a corporation that is made up of a number of different, seemingly unrelated businesses. One company in a conglomerate can own a controlling stake in a number of smaller firms which conduct business separately.

Some of the country’s conglomerates include the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., the SM Group, San Miguel Corp., JG Summit Holdings Inc. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp.

“We want to determine whether they [conglomerates] are [tax] compliant. Since they are much larger than other corporations, there are a lot of things that are likely going on in there,” Ortiz was quoted by a broadsheet as saying.

He was referring to schemes that conglomerates use to arrive at a lower tax base, substantially reducing their respective tax dues.

“This can happen through transfer pricing, diverting money into subsidiaries or other businesses that would be reflected as expense rather than income, the nature of its loan transactions, and whether or not they are buying or selling at arm’s length, among others,” Ortiz said.

Arm’s length refers to a transaction in which the buyers and sellers of a product, or in this case, stocks, act independently and on their own business’ interest.

Former BIR chief Tan-Torres initiated the move, which current revenue head Kim Henares supported.

“We conduct a full-blown auditing on banking and other financial institutions annually. But this one [conglomerates] is different since we are only doing it now,” Ortiz said, who declined to identify the conglomerates.

James Roldan, BIR assistant commissioner for enforcement service, said there were 18 conglomerates on the agency’s list, with 12 assigned to the Large Taxpayers Service.

He said his team was focusing on six conglomerates with cases that have better prospects in terms of collecting more taxes, and possibly building criminal charges.