The Anatomy of Motels according to the BIR

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Days of motel owners who make mambo-jumbo with their manipulated lower assessed valued income taxes are numbered.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue has found a formula how to assess the number of couples who patronized these lucrative tryst businesses in this tropical country.

Assistant Revenue District Officer Maria Bernadette Mangaoang said that the national tax office has formulated a plan where a BIR personnel lists how many cars entered the motel everyday.

She said usually the lists are recorded on the logbook of the motel security that mans its gate.

“Hindi naman everyday may BIR. Kaya nga e kukunin na lang nila iyong average, “ Mangaoang explained.

Mangaoang said that her office that over sees 15 towns and a city in Eastern Pangasinan did not implement it since most of the motels in Urdaneta City are mostly branches of motels whose main office is either in Manila or in Dagupan City.

She said branches only pay P500 registration fee with the local BIR like RDO-6, while they remitted the bigger Value Added Tax at their main office.

In an earlier interview with this paper before, Mr. Fred Quinto, the president of Hotel and Motel Associations in Pangasinan said that the BIR could use as basis the number of bed sheets and towels used by love birds. He said that the tax man could ask the laundry shops how many bed sheets and towels are consumed by this tryst hide-away business everyday.

But some tax observers who asked anonymity doubts the reliability of this measure as owners of laundry shops and motels could collude with each other by declaring a lower number of dirty, wet, and crumpled bed clothes and towels for the BIR to assess how much income tax to bill.

Mangaoang said that her office could count on the soap consumed by the customer in a particular period.

She argued that this can be checked by the government issued official receipts (O.R) used by the suppliers of soap to the motel owners.

A soap in a motel according to motel connoisseurs and part-time media men Ronel de Vera and Harold Barcelona is used only once as it was too thin for another day’s consumption.

They said that it is a half-inch in dimension and 3 inches in length and 2 inches in width.

They said the averaged prices of a three-hour short time check-in this air-conditioned room with comfort room and shower is P260 – a reasonable space to relieve ones prurience.

But another part time media scribe Jun Pantal said that low budget motel charges a short time of three hours as low as P150 for financially constrained couple.

“The only downsize is the bed is rickety and cockroaches and bugs abound. While the bed sheets have holes and sewed from different sacks of flour with names like “Manila Flour,” “Royal Flour, etc”, he told this paper in Pilipino.

He said poor man’s lodges like Caliman in Dagupan City used electric fan only as ventilation, and customers share a common comfort room and shower.