In 2004, the bureau was able to issue 7,744 letter notices (LN) to taxpayers with anomalous tax declarations, out of which 1,156 were collected, amounting to more than P1 billion worth of tax payments recovered. Last year, more than 12,000 LNs were issued, out of which close to 2,000 were collected amounting to more than P2.5 billion.

'The more than P2 billion we collected last year is way above our expectation,' said Curiba. Acknowledging that much still needs to be done, the BIR official said that they are at least on the right track. 'The management has shown appreciation for the performance of the BITF and wants to institutionalize this task force,' said Curiba.

Moving forward, the bureau hopes to establish new strategies to handle new sources of information, like monthly sales reports from cash register machines or monthly point-of-sale machines, professionals' income and tax profiles, and hospitals' data, among others, for more comprehensive data matching.