Increasing competitive demands, elimination of technological barriers and the need for efficient tax collection are some of the driving forces that have compelled the Philippine Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to change its tax system.
In April last year, BIR made the decision to replace its fifteen-year-old Integrated Tax System (ITS) with the customised trips™ Tax solution via the Electronic Tax Information System (eTIS) project implemented by Crown Agents (CA) in cooperation with Sun/Philcox - a Philippines technology provider.
As the Bureau plays a critical role in enabling the accurate and efficient collection and processing of tax revenues, the improved services with help ensure efficient service delivery while providing additional capabilities to mitigate risk and drive compliance.
The eTIS project aims to address the Bureau's current and future requirements. It will provide efficient information processing and address the management of the varied needs of participating stakeholders. The implemented solution will support seamless integration with other information systems within BIR.
BIR selected the Crown Agents' tax application package trips™ Tax which combines the administration of direct taxes, indirect taxes, other duties, permits and licences in an integrated taxpayer ledger system.
Considerable progress has been achieved by the project team in a year which has been marked by a number of events. As seen in our project milestones below.
Project Milestones
- April - Project stakeholder's briefings - Attended by various project stakeholders from the BIR National Office, Mr. Joseph Musolino (eTIS Project Manager, Crown Agents), presented the project scope and overview; objectives; project roadmap and stakeholders' roles and responsibilities.
- May - trips™ Demo for BIR Middle Management Executives - Quick preview and demonstration of features and functionalities of TRIPS software presented by Mr. Joseph Musolino.
- July - eTIS implementation team pilot sites visit (RR Makati) - eTIS implementation team visited nine Pilot RDOs of Makati to inform BIR stakeholders of the implementation activities and obtain their commitment and cooperation for the project success.
- April to present - Functional Specification Requirement (FSR) validations and sign off - Series of validation meetings are held to map, validate and gather requirements with BIR stakeholders to make certain that the scope of eTIS requirements are met.
- August to present - User Acceptance Testing (UAT) - on-going User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is conducted to test various eTIS modules. Participants were taught how to use a "bug tracker" tool to log and monitor system errors. Sessions are led by Crown Agents quality assurance team, business, analysts, and attended by the BIR stakeholder counterparts. Currently, the Taxpayer Registrations (REG), Taxpayer Accounting system (TAS) and Collections and Remittance Reconciliations (CCR) have passed the UAT and have been signed off.