Philippine Daily Inquirer
3:56 am | Monday, January 28th, 2013
MANILA, Philippines—The Bureau of Internal Revenue has been asked to investigate whether the heirs of the late Josefina Madrigal Bayot – including Susana Bayot Ortigas, now involved in a high profile legal separation case with her estranged husband, Francisco “Paqui” Ortigas III – have evaded taxes when they inherited their mother’s estate.
The issue was raised by an anonymous complainant in a detailed letter sent to the office of Revenue Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares in November 2012.
The letter alleges that the total liability of the three Madrigal heirs, Susana, Vicente and Francisco, would amount to over P433 million after factoring in an annual 20 percent interest on the unpaid taxes in the 22 years since the transfer of assets were made.
The Madrigal-Bayot matriarch died intestate on March 30, 1990, and her heirs executed a deed of extrajudicial settlement reporting that they were left with only P2.8 million worth of properties (P750,894 in real estate and P2.014 million in shares of stock). For this, they paid P1.176 million in estate taxes to the government.
“However, it appears that not all the properties left by Josefina were listed and declared in the extra judicial settlement for the proper computation of estate tax,” the complaint letter to the BIR said.
“Mrs. Susana Bayot Ortigas listed in a public document that she owns numerous real and personal properties as her paraphernal properties with the acquisition cost conservatively estimated at P229.1 million,” it added.
Article 109 of the Civil Code defines paraphernal properties as those owned by the spouse prior to the marriage or those acquired during the marriage by donation or inheritance.
Sources familiar with the issue said the listing of Mrs. Ortigas properties’ were made in her ongoing case against her estranged husband, Paqui. In this case, Mrs. Ortigas claimed that bulk of the couple’s properties were brought by her into the marriage and, as such, should revert to her upon the dissolution of the union.
As this developed, the lawyers of Mrs. Ortigas released a statement expressing their client’s “great disappointment” with the anonymous complaint filed with the BIR, saying that all taxes due from the estate of her late mother have been paid.
“The anonymous complaint is baseless, malicious and could only have been fabricated by her estranged husband, Francisco M. Ortigas III,” said the statement issued by lawyers Thea Daep and Victor Emmanuel Pangilinan of the Villaraza Cruz Marcelo & Angangco law office.
They added that no case has been filed by any authority against their client over the last two decades for the alleged estate taxes, and that any liability would have prescribed by now.
“It is ironic that Mr. Francisco M. Ortigas III should complain about the estate of the late Dona Pinang when it is the estate of his parents, the late spouses Francisco Ortigas, Jr. and Remedios Miranda Ortigas, that should be looked into,” the lawyers for Mrs. Ortigas fired back, while questioning the timing of the complaint filed with the BIR.
“It is unfortunate that Francisco M. Ortigas III would stoop so low as to desecrate the memory of Doña Pinang, who treated and loved him like her own child,” they added. “It is even more unfortunate that he values money more than his own family.”
The complaint to the BIR noted that there is a “huge discrepancy” between Mrs. Ortigas’ listing of paraphernal properties (comprising 113 parcels of land and shares of stock in 35 corporations) with those listed in the extra judicial settlement filed in the 1990s.
The paraphernal properties declared by Mrs. Ortigas include a 271-square meter unit at the Twin Towers Condominium in Makati City bought for P24.3 million; three parcels of land in the Madrigal Business park in Muntinlupa City with a combined area of 4,890 sqm. and collectively acquired at P139.4 million; a P21.8-million property in Redwood City, California; and 77 parcels of land in Calatagan, Batangas, among others.
Also listed are gold and country club shares in Manila Polo Club, Alabang Country Club and Wack Wack Golf and Country Club with a combined acquisition cost of P21.6 million.
“If [Mrs. Ortigas] declared real and personal properties with the acquisition cost conservatively estimated at P229.1 million as her paraphernal properties even if these were acquired after the death of Josefina, [Mrs. Ortigas] is therefore of the position that she inherited the money that she used to acquire the real and personal properties,” the complaint said.
“The huge amount of cash was not listed in the extra judicial settlement among the personal properties left by Josefina to her heirs and was never declared for estate tax purposes,” it added.
A ranking BIR official has confirmed that the bureau is familiar with the complaint. The agency regularly receives anonymous tips from whistleblowers and uses these leads for probing potential tax liabilities under its Run After Tax Evaders program (awarding a maximum of P1 million to informants who lead to successful prosecution of tax evaders). As a matter of practice, however, the BIR does not comment on ongoing tax investigations.
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Tags: Bureau of Internal Revenue , Business , Franciusco "Paqui" Ortigas III , Josefina Madrigal Bayot , Kim Henares , Susana Bayot Ortigas , tax collections , tax evasion cases inheritance taxes , taxes
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