Report of meetings : April 21, 1955 

 - page 4 
<br/><br/> The Rotary Balita no. 770 (April 28, 1955). 
<br/><br/> The Magsaysay administration has collected more taxes than the previous one and more could still be collected if only the internal revenue bureau could get the cooperation of the Congress and taxpayers, Revenue Collector J. Antonio Araneta told the Manila Rotary Club on April 21.  Araneta stressed that the intensification of the tax collection drive alone would not solve the government's poor financial position. Steps should be taken, he said, to enlarge the tax base.  He charged certain legislators as "impeding" his tax collection campaign, saying that the very people who made the tax laws are putting tax officials to ridicule.  He said that in 1954, his bureau collected P28 million more than in 1953, and that during the first two months of 1955, the BIR collected more than P4 million as compared to the corresponding period of the previous year.  The collector indicated that some taxpayers prefer giving bribes to revenue men than paying their tax assessments. He referred to the complaints from taxpayers that they were being harrased by tax examiners who make different computations on the taxpayers assessments.  As guest of the Rotary Club, Araneta was interrogated after his speech, by a panel of five Rotarians. They were: Pedro E. Teodoro, Francisco Dalupan, Daniel Gomez, Felix Gonzalez, and Alfredo Velayo.  Araneta, when asked whether senators and congressmen pay their taxes, he replied that he was not conversant with the present tax status of the solons.  He told the Rotarians that he was not responsible for the designation of tax examiners and for the re-check of the taxpayers' papers, adding that the mere fact that the taxpayers' papers were subjected to scrutiny indicated that the government was not satisfied with the claims of the taxpayers.