Informed compliance matters
From time to time, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) invites taxpayers to attend tax awareness seminars, briefings and dialogues. These are pursuant to initiatives such as the Taxpayer Awareness Program under Revenue Memorandum Order No. 24-2020 and periodic issuances like Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 13-2025, which designated February as “Tax Awareness Month.”
These efforts deserve recognition. In a system anchored on self-assessment, any attempt to narrow the information gap between the state and the citizen is a step forward. Recognition, however, must be paired with candor. These efforts, while noble, are not enough.
The Philippine tax system is complex and highly technical. It assumes a level of legal and accounting literacy that most ordinary taxpayers simply do not possess. Yet we continue to operate on the convenient fiction that once a person is “registered,” he or she is fully equipped to comply.
Reality tells a different story
A significant portion of noncompliance does not arise from calculated evasion, but from genuine ignorance. Many taxpayers do not know which returns they are required to file, which taxes apply to them, when deadlines fall, how to file or how to pay. They do not know how to keep books, issue receipts or even obtain authority to print receipts.
Most only discover their mistakes when penalties have already attached. By then, interest has compounded. Surcharges have accrued. Assessments have been issued.
What began as a failure of information metastasizes into a financial and legal crisis.
This is not an abstract problem. Practitioners routinely encounter taxpayers who are shocked to learn that they have been noncompliant for years, not out of intent, but out of misunderstanding. More troubling are anecdotal accounts in which certain revenue officers (not all, and certainly not most) later capitalize on these early missteps as audit “findings.” The taxpayer who was never properly guided at registration becomes the taxpayer with deficiencies later on.
The asymmetry of knowledge becomes a source of institutional power
This corrodes trust. It also undermines the moral architecture of the tax system.
A system that penalizes citizens for obligations they were never clearly taught to perform weakens its own legitimacy.
If the objective of tax administration is sustained voluntary compliance, then the system must confront an uncomfortable premise: Compliance cannot be voluntary if it is not informed.
Optional, sporadic seminars cannot carry this burden alone. Pamphlets handed across counters are not substitutes for structured instruction. Posters on walls do not equate to comprehension.
Taxpayer education must, therefore, be elevated from a peripheral program to a structural requirement. At a minimum, the BIR should institutionalize a comprehensive and standardized briefing for all new registrants. Not a cursory orientation. Not a flyer handed across a counter. A real session that explains, in plain language, the taxes that apply to the registrant, the returns that must be filed, the deadlines that must be observed and the manner by which those returns are properly accomplished and paid.
It should cover basic record-keeping obligations, how official receipts are issued and secured, common compliance mistakes that lead to penalties, and the taxpayer’s basic rights.
This briefing should be mandatory.
More than that, attendance should be made a precondition for registration.
Just as professionals must complete basic training before practicing their craft, taxpayers entering the formal economy should be required to undergo basic compliance education before being released into a highly technical regulatory environment.
No friction cost
Some will argue that this adds friction to doing business. That concern is overstated. A few hours of structured instruction at the front end will save years of disputes, enforcement costs and lost productivity at the back end.
Others will say that information is already available online. But accessibility is not the same as assimilation. Law is not intuitive. Tax law least of all.
Guidance must be actively transmitted, not passively posted.
A mandatory briefing also benefits the BIR. An informed taxpayer base reduces inadvertent violations. It allows enforcement resources to focus on deliberate evasion rather than accidental error. It strengthens institutional credibility.
Most importantly, it reframes the relationship between the state and the citizen.
Taxation should not be experienced as an ambush. It should operate as a shared project. The state provides clear rules, meaningful instruction and fair enforcement. The taxpayer provides honest reporting and timely payment.
Nation-building is not the work of government alone. The BIR and the Filipino taxpayer must ultimately stand not as adversaries, but as partners in that enterprise.
The author is a practicing lawyer focusing on tax, corporate and litigation work, with sustained engagement in human rights advocacy. In his ideals and in life, he remains a hopeless romantic. He may be contacted at fdrivera@dgrlawoffices.com.
