{"id":1312,"date":"2019-12-07T10:17:55","date_gmt":"2019-12-07T10:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=1312"},"modified":"2026-04-24T09:42:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:42:49","slug":"philippines-pogos-tax-gambling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/philippines-pogos-tax-gambling","title":{"rendered":"Philippines gives POGOs 3 days to solve tax obligations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">President Duterte said he would personally &#8220;slap&#8221; those who do not pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Philippines.- President Rodrigo Duterte gave Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) an ultimatum: 72 hours to solve their tax obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;They are now ordered to register with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and get a tag number&#8230; you better settle your liabilities or else I&#8217;ll turn you into quails\u201d, said in an exclusive <em><strong>interview with CNN Philippines.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Asked about the deadline, he initially said 24 hours then changed it to three days. And added: \u201cDon&#8217;t fool around with Filipinos because Filipinos are not fools\u201d. Duterte insisted and warned POGOs not to test him, and as a threaten, said that he would personally \u201cslap\u201d any POGO operator that tried an evasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Taxation of POGOs has become an intense debate in the Philippine legislature. There were many proposals to impose levies to&nbsp; make sure the government can get <a href=\"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/philippines-online-gaming\"><em><strong>a share of online gambling revenue<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The BIR started its crackdown on POGOs on September 25, when it shut down an operator for non-payment of taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is based on Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez&#8217;s order close down all POGOs that fail to settle tax liabilities after revealing that POGOs operating there have approximately PHP 21.62 billion (\u20ac381 million) in unpaid taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since POGOs are licensed and regulated in the Philippines, they had been operating with a lot of freedom. That is the reason why they are so popular with players from neighbouring countries, especially China where online gambling is banned.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Duterte said he would personally &#8220;slap&#8221; those who do not pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"President Duterte has issued a 72-hour ultimatum to Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) to settle PHP 21.62 billion (\u20ac381 million) in unpaid tax liabilities. This directive follows a government crackdown initiated by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez, emphasizing stricter regulatory enforcement on a sector popular for serving offshore markets. The move underscores the government's intent to secure its share of online gambling revenue from licensed operators.","focusai_entities":"Rodrigo Duterte, Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), CNN Philippines, Carlos Dominguez","focusai_location":"Philippines, China","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (1.0), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (1.0), affiliate_publisher (0.7), payments_fraud_aml (0.7), investor_analyst (1.0), supplier_vendor (0.8), journalist_researcher (1.0)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"POGO Tax Enforcement?","query":"What are the specific legal and regulatory mechanisms the Philippine government intends to employ for the enforcement and collection of the PHP 21.62 billion in POGO tax liabilities?"},{"label":"GGR Impact?","query":"How will the potential cessation of operations by non-compliant POGOs impact the Philippines' overall Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) and Net Gaming Revenue (NGR) projections from the offshore gaming sector?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,154,16333],"tags":[229,128,1205,337,2895],"class_list":["post-1312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-legislation-news","category-south-east-asia-news","tag-gambling","tag-philippines","tag-pogo","tag-regulation","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777017234,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions\/777017234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}