{"id":7541,"date":"2020-06-24T20:32:11","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T20:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=7541"},"modified":"2026-04-24T04:12:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T07:12:05","slug":"the-philippines-expects-p20-billion-from-pogos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/the-philippines-expects-p20-billion-from-pogos","title":{"rendered":"The Philippines expects P20 billion from POGOs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Deparment of Finance says P20 billion is the minimum offshore operators should be giving to Philippines state coffers each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Philippines.- The Department of Finance expects Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs) to deliver around P20 billion (USD399million) per year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Kapihan sa Manila Bay virtual briefing, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the government was currently receiving about P6 billion (USD119 million) a year from POGOs and that the income remained a small portion of government revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the amount received in 2019, while in previous years POGOs paid only P1 billion (US$19.9million) in taxes, GMA News reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The POGO industry, represented by the Accredited Service Providers Association of PAGCOR<\/em><\/strong> (ASPAP), said its members had paid the required regulatory fees. However, local congress members say POGOs owe the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) about P50 billion<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (about US$997 million) in unpaid taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dominguez said: “Tax revenues in the Philippines in 2020 was P2 trillion (USD39.9 billion). You know how much we got from the casinos? P20 billion (USD399million). It’s not that much.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also admitted that it might be true that only two of the 60 POGOs licensed to operate in the Philippines had paid their taxes in the last year, as senator Joel Villanueva recently claimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since they have no legal or financial residency in the country, the companies are claiming that the 5 per cent franchise tax that local operators must pay does not apply to them. However, legislators say all POGOs licensed by PAGCOR to operate in the Philippines must pay the fee no matter where they are physically located.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Deparment of Finance says P20 billion is the minimum offshore operators should be giving to Philippines state coffers each year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"The Philippine Department of Finance is targeting P20 billion annually from Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs), a significant increase from the current P6 billion, citing P50 billion in alleged unpaid taxes. POGOs dispute the applicability of the 5% franchise tax due to their offshore residency, creating a regulatory and fiscal standoff with the government. This situation highlights a critical challenge in tax compliance and regulatory enforcement within the iGaming sector.","focusai_entities":"Department of Finance, Carlos Dominguez III, Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators, PAGCOR, Accredited Service Providers Association of PAGCOR, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Joel Villanueva, GMA News","focusai_location":"Philippines, Manila Bay","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (0.9), operator_casino (0.8), investor_analyst (0.9), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"POGO Tax Enforcement?","query":"What specific enforcement mechanisms will the Bureau of Internal Revenue deploy to collect the alleged P50 billion in unpaid POGO taxes, and what are the potential legal ramifications for non-compliant operators?"},{"label":"Regulatory Framework Evolution?","query":"How might this fiscal dispute influence PAGCOR's future B2B\/B2C licensing frameworks and governance structures for offshore operators, particularly concerning residency and tax obligations?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,158,16333],"tags":[128,15789,2895],"class_list":["post-7541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regulation-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\/7541","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=7541"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777010482,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7541\/revisions\/777010482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}