By Moira Encina
Eagle News Service
The Bureau of Internal Revenue on Friday filed a P1-billion tax evasion case against Prieto-owned Golden Donuts Inc., the Philippine franchisee of Dunkin Donuts.
In a statement, the BIR said it filed the criminal complaint against GDI’s president Walter Spakowski, treasurer Miguel Prieto, chief financial officer Pedro Paraiso, and vice president for finance and administration Jocelyn V. Santos for willful attempt to evade or defeat tax and for deliberate failure to supply correct and accurate information about the company’s income tax return and quarterly value added tax return.
The agency said the company–which is owned by the Prietos who also owned majority shares of the Philippine Daily Inquirer before these were sold to Ramon Ang—and its corporate officers were also being held civilly liable for income tax, value added tax and expanded withholding tax deficiencies covering the year 2007, and amounting to P1,118,331,643.79
According to the BIR, the cases were filed after it found sales invoices issued by various suppliers were “intentionally altered in a desperate attempt to conform to substantiation requirements,” and did not contain the TIN of GDI.
“Through this scheme, GDI was able to claim the altered invoices as deductions from its income and as input VAT credits in the amount of P99,297, 036.47 and P11,915, 644.38 respectively,” the BIR said.
It said it also found that GDI “substantially under-declared its sales by 39%” and its royalty income by P38,963, 462.56.
According to the BIR, this was the 131st case filed by the BIR under its Run After Tax Evaders program.
Earlier, President Rodrigo Duterte repeatedly slammed the Prieto family for their alleged failure to pay proper taxes to the government, and for their alleged attempt to hold on to the government-owned Mile Long property.