previously<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDrilon is trying to get his initiative included in so-called “Bayanihan to Recover as One Act”, which aims to accelerate the Philippine economy’s recovery following the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The senator said POGOs were allowed to stay in the Philippines and open ahead of other businesses during quarantine precisely to use their 5 per cent franchise to finance Covid-19 recovery programmes, the Manila Times reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Drilon said the POGO’s P50 billion in outstanding tax was \u201ca huge amount\u201d that \u201ccould go a long way\u201d to help finance the response to the pandemic, and that companies’ failure to settle their obligations could be grounds for closure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But senator Joel Villanueva, whose Labour Committee held an investigation on POGO operations in the first quarter of the year, told the chamber that Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) officials had earlier admitted to having a “hard time” collecting dues from Chinese-run online gambling firms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Villanueva said that apart from the registered gambling firms, there were also 120 to 150 illegal online gambling hubs in the country, ABS-CBN reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senator wants to use POGOs’ P50 billion (\u20ac892.4 million) in unpaid taxes to fund Covid-19 recoverty programme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Senator Franklin Drilon is advocating for the collection of P50 billion (\u20ac892.4 million) in unpaid taxes from Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations (POGOs) to fund the nation's Covid-19 recovery programs. This initiative, proposed for inclusion in the \"Bayanihan to Recover as One Act,\" highlights significant regulatory compliance challenges, with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) admitting difficulties in collecting dues and identifying numerous illegal online gambling hubs.","focusai_entities":"Franklin Drilon, Joel Villanueva, Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations (POGO), Senate, Labour Committee, Manila Times, ABS-CBN","focusai_location":"Philippines","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (0.9), operator_casino (0.9), supplier_vendor (0.8), investor_analyst (0.9), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"POGO Tax Enforcement Strategy?","query":"What specific enforcement mechanisms will the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) employ to collect the P50 billion in outstanding POGO taxes, given past difficulties and the existence of illegal operations?"},{"label":"Economic Impact of POGO Closures?","query":"What is the projected economic impact of potential POGO closures on the Philippine economy, considering both direct tax revenue and indirect employment effects?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,158,16333],"tags":[128,15789,2895],"class_list":["post-7006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-casino-news","category-slider-home","category-south-east-asia-news","tag-philippines","tag-pogos","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7006","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=7006"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7023,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7006\/revisions\/7023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}