Not even the members and staff of Congress’ powerful Commission on Appointments, or CA, were spared from the underhanded retaliatory action of the Commission on Audit, or CoA, for the delayed confirmation of the appointment of Heidi Mendoza as CoA commissioner.
The CoA reported that the CA misclassified the P204.41 million in member and staff bonuses to avoid taxation. This adverse audit finding was contained in CoA’s annual audit report on the CA for 2012 and published in mainstream media on 28 March 2014, three years after the confirmation of the appointment of Heidi Mendoza was bypassed by the CA for the tenth time.
According to the CoA annual audit report, the members and staff of Congress’ powerful Commission on Appointments enjoyed a bounty of allowances in 2012, including P204.41 million in extra benefits erroneously classified as maintenance and operating expenses in official records.
The P204.41 million in bonuses tucked under the “other maintenance and operating expenses,” or OMOE category, was over and above the regular salaries and numerous allowances that the commission members and personnel received.
Altogether, the P365.86 million in salaries and benefits that commission personnel received in 2012 made up the bulk of the CA’s P455.1 million in expenses for 2012.
The CoA report covered the Commission on Appointments of the 15th Congress, which was headed by then Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile.
The CA is composed of the president of the Senate as ex-officio chair, 12 senators, and 12 members of the House of Representatives.
In going over the CA’s P236.14 million OMOE, the CoA supposedly found that 204.41 million in expenses did not belong to this category as these were essentially allowances and bonuses. These should have been taxed but were not because they were not correctly classified, the CoA said. It was supposed to be subject to withholding tax.
After the publication in mainstream media of the CA misclassification of its P204.41 million in bonuses to escape taxation, the DAILY TRIBUNE reported in March 2014, through its World News Bureau, that President Noynoy’s sentinel at CoA, Heidi Mendoza, whose appointment remained unconfirmed by the powerful bicameral CA, was found to be a tax fraud.
Despite earning P7,541,600, or almost P2 million a year, from 2007 to 2010, she admitted in a statement that she did not pay a single centavo in income tax, which is ironic as the money was mostly derived from writing modules and preaching against corruption, a vicious form of which is tax evasion. She owed the government at least P2 million.
The documents showed that after her stint at CoA, she took on high-paying, dollar-denominated consultancy work with the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Australian Aid and other multilateral donor agencies or their contractors.
The documents showed that among her lucrative consultancy contracts were with the ALTAIR-European Commission; with AusAid as governance and anti-corruption consultant for the Philippine Development Forum Working Group; the Asian Development Bank as governance and anti-corruption consultant for Strengthening the Justice Sector from June 2008 to June 2010; and the Asian Development Bank as program analyst for the Country Partnership Strategy of Health and Social Issues from October 2010 to January 2011.
The failure of Heidi Mendoza to pay taxes ran counter to Revenue Regulations 31-2013, which BIR Commissioner Kim Henares issued before the tax filing season in April of that year. The regulation delineated the tax liabilities of Filipino employees of international organizations with offices in the country.
Heidi Mendoza was required to pay her taxes as a precondition for her confirmation.