Key field officials of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) nationwide convened on Wednesday in Antipolo City for a three-day closed-door meeting to map out an effective tax collection strategy and assess the agency's collection performance during the first semester.

BIR Commissioner Sixto Esquivias IV called the conference after it was confirmed that last month's tax collection dropped anew after the BIR posted a surplus of some P7 billion in June.

All 19 regional directors and 115 revenue district officers of the BIR attended the conference and are expected to brief the BIR management on their respective revenue enhancement action plans.

The government has tasked the BIR to raise P798 billion this year.

Sources said discussions during the meeting will center on priority programs like collection performance of every region and district; the number of businesses closed under the Oplan Kandado program; monitoring of withholding tax remittances of the top 20,000 corporations; and tax campaign activities for taxpayers and accounting practitioners.

But BIR insiders however, predicted that the agency would not be able to meet its collection goal for the year even if all-out efforts are exerted due to the global financial crisis.

They also cited the enactment of recent laws such as one which reduced the corporate income tax rate from 35 to 30 percent and another increasing the personal and additional tax exemptions for individual taxpayers and exempting minimum wage earners from income taxation.

Revenue officials estimate that annual tax losses as a result of the laws' enactment could reach up to more than P40 billion annually.

They said that because of too many unfavorable factors the BIR would be lucky if it exceeds its 2008 collection.

Records showed that the BIR sustained more than P12-billion collection deficit during the first semester of the year.