Senate Bill No. 724 "An Act Declaring Certain Positions in the BIR and the BOC as Part of the Confidential Staff of the Appointing Officials in Said Bureau and for Other Purposes"

November 10, 1998 BIR RULING [DA-484-98] MEMORANDUM FOR : Hon. Solomon S. Cua : Undersecretary of Finance FROM : Commissioner Beethoven L. Rualo RE : Senate Bill No. 724 "An Act Declaring Certain Positions in the BIR and the BOC as Part of the Confidential Staff of the Appointing Officials in Said Bureau and for Other Purposes" DATE : September 25, 1998 Features of the Senate Bill "SEC. 1. Any provisions of law to the contrary notwithstanding, all the existing positions of Revenue Officer I, II, III, IV, and V and Customs Officer I and II in the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs, respectively, are hereby made part of the confidential staff of the appointing officials in said bureaus. The nomenclatures of the abovementioned positions are hereby changed to Confidential Revenue Officer I, II, III, IV, and V and Confidential Customs Officer I and II, respectively. "SEC. 2. This Act shall not affect the incumbents of the positions mentioned in the preceding Section hereof who hold permanent appointments and shall apply only to the particular positions involved and not to similar position or positions subsequently created. However, only those who accept appointments to the confidential positions shall be entitled to the benefits provided for in Section 4 hereof. "SEC. 3. The positions enumerated under Section 1 shall be treated as confidential in nature and appointees thereto may be removed for lack of confidence on the part of the appointment authority. "SEC. 4. The officers and employee who accept appointments to the confidential positions referred to above shall be entitled to an incentive pay of 1% of their total revenue tax collections for a given period and 2% thereof in excess of their collection targets for the same period." COMMENTS : (1) The confidential positions although it carries with it an incentive pay of 1% of the total revenue tax collections for a given period and 2% thereof in excess of collection targets for the same period will not be attractive to the officers and employees of the BIR because of the absence of the security of tenure; (2) If the officers and employees of the BIR occupying confidential positions commit graft and corruption, the BIR might not be able to go after them anymore because they are not covered by the Civil Service Law; (3) Possibility of political patronage in the merit system. Positions will be susceptible to abuse of authority by the appointing authority. Subject positions will proliferate political patronage on the bureaucracy which is against Civil Service Law and Rules. Moreover, it is against the merit system principle of the Civil Service; and (4) If the solution to the problem of graft and corruption in certain ranks of the bureaucracy is the attachment of attractive emoluments and incentives, then we might as well give the proposed emoluments and incentives to all employees of the BIR so as not to create a social problem. All the employees of the BIR has actually contributed, in one way or another to the success of the agency and not only a select few. Since the BIR performs the very sensitive function of collecting a greater portion of the revenue for the operations of the government, it is but proper that its employees be compensated in terms of a higher salary position classification rather than a selective position reclassification as proposed by the bill. (SGD.) BEETHOVEN L. RUALO Commissioner of Internal Revenue