BIR Ruling No. 063-80

December 22, 1980 BIR RULING NO. 063-80 019-00 000-00 63-80 Manila Electric Company Ortigas Avenue Pasig, Metro Manila Attention : Atty . Marcelo N . Fernando Vice-President & General Manager Gentlemen: This refers to your letter dated October 24, 1980 seeking opinion and/or ruling on how to impose, levy and collect, as a collection agency for the government, the energy tax pursuant to Batas Pambansa Blg. 36 on electric bills of residential customers covering a period of more or less than a month's consumption. It is represented that last June, Meralco introduced the so-called "staggered meter reading" system (SMR) in order to balance the work load of employees in branches and other company offices charged with collecting bills and to avoid overcrowding of customers coming to Meralco branch offices to pay their bills; that to put the SMR system in place, billing periods of some customers came out to be less than one month while others went beyond one month because meters of customers were read either earlier or later than the usual reading dates that after this one-time deviation, billings again covered customer's monthly consumption. You also represented that for the purpose of applying the energy tax, Meralco had to resort to proportionate billings to arrive at a "normalized" one month consumption; that this treatment has been applied both to customers whose billings were for less than one month and to those for more than one month; and that this procedure of "normalizing" charges is a long established practice in the electricity business. Finally, you stated that electric rates are also based on monthly consumption and whenever a billing, for one reason or another, has to cover more or less than one month consumption, Meralco resorts to proportionate billing. In reply, I have the honor to inform you that since you resort to proportionate billing in computing the electric bills due from your customers whenever the coverage of the bills exceeds or is less than a month's consumption, this Office believes, and so holds, that the same procedure may be followed in the computation of the energy tax. It is noted that the energy tax "shall be paid to and withheld by electric utilities from their respective residential customers along with their monthly electric billings." (Sec. 2, Batas Pambansa Blg. 36) In other words, the bill on electric consumption as well as the energy tax both due from the residential customer and payable to you should cover the same period. cdta Very truly yours, RUBEN B. ANCHETA Acting Commissioner