BIR tightens rule on transfer tax

INTERNAL Revenue Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares has ordered all revenue district officers (RDOs) to provide each week the Register of Deeds of the places where they have jurisdiction an updated list of subsisting certificates authorizing registration (CARs/eCARs).

Henares issued Revenue Memorandum Order (RMO) 10-2015 mandating RDOs to send a weekly update on subsisting CARs/eCARs to the Register of Deeds concerned to prevent the transfer of ownership of real property without the proper and accurate payment of transfer tax and to stop the use of spurious CARs/eCARs.

Earlier, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Land Registration Authority (LRA) entered into an agreement on the use of a common digital database and system of verifying the eCARs issued by the BIR before any transfer of title over real estate can be effected either through sale, donation or succession.

Under RMO 10-2015, an updated list of manually issued CARs and computerized eCARs shall be provided to the concerned Register of Deeds on a weekly basis.

RMO 10-2015 provides that any CARs that are not included in the list of manually issued CARs/eCARs are deemed spurious, and may, therefore, not be used in applications with the Register of Deeds for transfer of title over real property.

The giving of the list of manually issued CARs/eCARs is a provisional measure to ensure that the BIR and the respective Registers of Deeds use the same database of subsisting CARs in places wherein the digital database shared and synchronized between the BIR and the LRA to keep track of eCARs issued is not yet in place.

The manual list of existing CARs is also required to be submitted by the RDOs, even in places where the digital database is already existing because there may be some CARs that are still effective and may still be presented to the Registers of Deeds for purposes of transferring title.

source:  Business Mirror