Many BPO firms prefer to stay under PEZA, says IBPAP
MANILA, PHILIPPINES — A significant number of business process outsourcing (BPO) firms opted to remain registered under the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) amid the Board of Investments (BOI) efforts to encourage them to transfer their membership.
In the past year, BPOs registered under PEZA faced challenges in keeping their tax perks and incentives after the investment promotions agency said that it will forfeit tax breaks for BPOs that will continue to implement work-from-home (WFH) arrangements.
The Fiscal Incentives Review Board, then allowed BPOs transfer their registration from PEZO to the Board of Investments (BOI) in order to keep enjoying tax incentives.
However, only 40% of affected BPOs opted to transfer their membership to BPO as of December 31st.
According to IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) president Jack Madrird, the reported low number of applicant enterprises seeking the paper transfer may also be due to the expectation of many registered business enterprises (RBEs) on the possible continuing validity of the 30 percent work-from-home (WFH) arrangement enabled by the letters of authority (LOAs) issued by PEZA.
“We were aware of registered business enterprises (RBEs) who would rather not undertake the paper transfer of their registration to BOI and stay solely with PEZA as their investment promotion agency (IPA),” said Madrid.
According to PEZA, it has endorsed a total of 786 ITBPMs to the BOI.
