SALN to SALIS

Dear insansapinas,

If submitting SALN with a lot of erroneous entries  is considered a high crime, all government officials and employees are criminal. Walang matitira sa gobyerno. Even financial statements prepared by licensed CPA are not devoid of errors that a certification that they present FAIRLY  the financial condition  status of the company is needed for them to be acceptable by agencies requiring audited financial statements. To be able to express an opinion, the CPA should have conducted an audit to check the veracity of the amounts in the statements. Most of the values of the real assets come from the town or city hall tax assessors because the principle accepted is that of conservatish, whichever is lower. .

The Civil Service Commission came up with a new form of SALN which prompted Raph Recto to make this suggection: 

SENATOR Ralph Recto on Friday bared that the new form for the much-debated statement of assets, liabilities and net worth is now more complicated than the previous one, prompting him to call on the Civil Service Commission to conduct an exhaustive and comprehensive information drive on the correct filing of the document. 

And I humbly suggest (TSEH) that the form's name be changed from SALN to SALIS---Statement of Assets and Liabilities and Income Statement. I am of the opinion that the author of this form is not an accountant and therefore does not know that expenses are not the only "expenses" deducted from the income of the individual. There are what you can personal exemption and deduction. These are items which may not require out-of-pocket costs but reduce the taxable income and so is the net income that goes to the SALN.


Besides, majority of the income taxpayers use the standard deduction whereby they do not itemize expenses and those whose incomes exceed the personal exemptions and deductions are exempted from filing ITR in order to save on paper and unnnecessary processing. Their names are included in the alpha lists submitted by the employers to the BIR. 


According to Duque: 

"The SALN is a wealth tracker. You will be able to find out whether the employee is spending so much more than what he actually earns. That is why the new SALN is very clear. You have to declare the income, the amount, source of income and you have to put there your personal and family expenditures," he said in an interview on Dateline Philippines.

Wrong. Itemizing the expenditures does not guarantee that these expenses are not bloated. Saka, wala na bang gagawin ang government official.employees kung hindi i-keep track ang kanilang expenses. Kumuha na sila ng bookkeeper. Subukan nga ninyong ilista ang mga expenses ninyo for the month, receipts and all. bah.

Duque said the SALNs can be used as a tool for transparency to check if a government official or employee is declaring his actual wealth.He cited the case of Customs clerk Paulino Elevado who is suspended and is now facing a lifestyle check for allegedly driving a Porsche and beating up a student after a car chase in Makati.

Wrong again. Many of the Customs and BIR employees aquired lot of properties which are not registered under their names. Sometimes they are in the name of corporations or are in the names of relatives. Then they engage in business so that they can show that they have other sources of income, kahit nilalangaw ang resto nila o kaya ang hardware stores o anumang negosyo sa pangalan lang.


They are more creative than accountants because many of them especially in the BIR are accountants.