Revenue from tax collections of P2.251 trillion in 2017, which is 14.25 percent as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), represents the highest tax effort in 10 years without any new legislation introduced to prop up collections, according to the Department of Finance (DOF).

Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran said tax effort in the first quarter of 2017 was at 13.4 percent, which increased to 14.9 percent in the second quarter and further rose to 15 percent in the third quarter. For the entire 2017, the tax effort reached 14.25 percent, an increase from the previous year’s 13.75 percent, he said.

In 2007, the government’s tax effort was reported at 13.5 percent as a percentage of GDP, which rose slightly to 13.6 percent in 2008, according to a report presented by Beltran to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez at a recent DOF Executive Committee (Execom) meeting.

The tax effort dipped to 12.2 and 12.1 percent respectively in 2009 and 2010. It reached 12.4 percent in 2011, and increased to 12.9 percent in 2012. With the implementation of Republic Act 10351 or the law increasing excise taxes on sin products such as cigarettes and alcohol, the tax effort rose steadily to 13.3 percent in 2013, 13.6 percent in 2014 and 2015 and 13.7 percent in 2016, said Beltran, who is the DOF’s chief economist.

“(The tax effort for 2017) is the highest tax effort increase over a period of ten years,” said Beltran during the Execom meeting. “This is without any new tax measure but purely from tax administration.”

Dominguez noted that besides registering the highest tax effort increase in 10 years, the DOF was also able to collect the highest dividends ever from government-owned and –controlled corporations (GOCCs) in 2017.

A separate report earlier submitted to Dominguez by the DOF’s Corporate Affairs Group led by Undersecretary Antonette Tionko showed that dividends remitted by GOCCs to the National Treasury in 2017 amounted to an all-time high of P36.45 billion, representing a nearly 30 percent increase from the previous year’s collections of P27.73 billion.

Dominguez noted that even if the Land Bank of the Philippines was not required to contribute dividends on its net earnings in 2017, remittances would reach P30.45 billion, still a remarkable improvement over the 2016 figures.

The Landbank was allowed to do away with its dividend contributions to the National Government in 2017 to give the bank sufficient leverage in its capital position to better serve the increasing developmental needs of the country.

In 2016, the Landbank, with P6.6 billion in remittances to the National Government, was the biggest dividend contributor among the GOCCs, making up almost 24 percent of the total dividend collections of P27.73 billion.

In 2017, even without Landbank, dividend collections from GOCCs increased by 9.8 percent, which Dominguez had traced to the DOF’s efforts to aggressively promote financial discipline among GOCCs.

With Landbank’s dividends included in the computations, total GOCC remittances would be P36.45 billion, or a 29.8 percent hike from the 2016 collections.

Tionko said dividend collections totaling P30.45 billion last year came from 53 GOCCs, including the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), which had not remitted dividends for the past four years, but has now emerged as one of the biggest dividend contributors.

CAAP, which remitted a total of P5.39 billion to the Treasury, was able to collect nearly P6 billion from Philippine Airlines in October last year, after President Duterte ordered the Department of Transportation not to extend the deadline it had given to the flag carrier to pay its long-overdue navigational fees and other charges.

Besides CAAP, among the other biggest dividend contributors were the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC) with P7.46 billion; Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), P2.51 billion; Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), P2.22 billion; Philippine Ports Authority (PPA), P1.95 billion; Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), P1.84 billion; National Power Corp. (NPC), P1.39 billion; Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor), P1.18 billion; and Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), P923.60 million.

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