Follow a BIR audit case

This feature is built but not yet released. It is not available in production, and this guide describes it ahead of its release.

When a company receives a letter from the BIR during a tax audit, Audit keeps the case. It holds the letters, what the company did, and every deadline they start, each with the rule it comes from. Audit appears in a company's menu only where Mendiola has turned it on for the firm.

Anyone who can open the company can add and confirm letters and record what was done. An archived company's cases can be read, not changed.

Add a letter

1. Open the company, then Audit.
2. Choose Add a letter from the BIR, and pick the scan or photo: a PDF, PNG or JPG of up to 4 MB.
3. The letter's page opens. Mateo reads the letter, and the page shows what it read when it is done. You do not need to reload.

If the letter cannot be read, the page says so. Type its fields yourself.

The letter itself is shown beside its fields. A PNG or JPG is shown as it was added. A PDF is drawn page by page as you scroll, fitted to the width of the card, with its number of pages above it. A letter of more than 20 pages shows its first 20: download it for the rest. Nothing in it can be clicked, and links and form fields in the PDF are not shown. If a PDF cannot be drawn, the page says so: download it and read it beside the form.

Remove a letter added by mistake

A letter nobody has confirmed yet can be removed: a duplicate, the wrong file, or a page that is not a BIR letter.

1. Open the letter's page.
2. Choose Remove this letter.
3. The page asks first. Choose Remove to remove it, or Keep to leave it.

Its file and what Mateo read go with it, and you return to the company's Audit page. The activity log records who removed it, with the file's name.

A confirmed letter cannot be removed: open it and correct it instead. If someone confirms the letter while you are removing it, the page says so and keeps it. An archived company's letters cannot be removed.

Confirm the letter and the day it arrived

Nothing in a letter counts until a person confirms it.

1. Check each field against the letter: its kind, its date, the taxable year, the office and its number. For a Letter of Authority (eLA), Mission Order or Tax Verification Notice, also tick the taxes it covers; tick none when it says all internal revenue taxes. When it says all internal revenue taxes except some, Mateo unticks a tax only when the letter excludes all of it, and says what else you could untick. For example, "except value-added tax" keeps Transaction tax ticked, because it also covers percentage tax: untick it if the company files no percentage tax.
2. Choose How it reached the company.
3. Enter Received on: the day the letter reached the company, not the date printed on it. The deadlines the letter starts run from this day (for mail, from when service was complete), and Mateo never fills it in.
4. Choose Confirm the letter.

The form warns you, without stopping you, when dates look out of order: for example, a letter received before the date printed on it. It says which case the letter files into. It also warns you before you confirm a second eLA for the same year: the case keeps both and flags the second.

Confirming opens the year's case, or files the letter into the case already open. A termination letter closes the year's open case. A later letter, such as a Preliminary Assessment Notice, that arrives before the authority letter opens a case too. That case says no eLA, Mission Order or TVN is on file until you add one, and its deadlines run at once.

Read the case

The case page shows:

• the stage strip: how far the audit has gone;
• Next for the company: the next deadline the company must meet, the day to file by and the last day. When a last day falls on a weekend or a holiday, the explanation names each day skipped, and the day to file by to be safe.
• What to look at: warnings, and questions for a partner, such as a protest filed after its last day;
• Every deadline: each with its explanation, including the BIR's own periods;
• What the company did;
• The BIR's last day to assess each return the authority letter covers, and to collect once an assessment arrives.

Letters lists every confirmed letter. Correct opens a letter again to fix a field. Its taxable year cannot change once it is filed in a case.

Record what was done

1. On the case, choose Record what was done.
2. Choose what was done and the day it was done. For a protest, choose whether it asks for reconsideration or reinvestigation.
3. Choose the letter it answers. Where the case holds more than one letter that the act could answer, such as two assessment notices, you must pick one. Otherwise you can leave it to count toward every letter received on or before that day.
4. Choose Save.

The deadline it meets shows Met. An act recorded by mistake can be removed with Remove; the activity log keeps both.

Where cases appear

• The company's Audit page lists its cases and the letters still to confirm.
• Audits lists the firm's open cases, the most pressing first.
• The company's Dashboard shows the cases on its Audit card. Its task list has a row for each next deadline, an urgent row for a deadline that passed with nothing recorded or a finding that needs action now, and a row for each letter to confirm.

Limits

• Dates come from the rules Mendiola follows, with their citations, and from the days a person confirms. They are never a model's. A partner should still check them before relying on them.
• A PDF letter is shown as a picture of each page: its text cannot be selected or searched there. Download it to do that.
• Waivers, suspensions of the period to assess, and the documents pack are not tracked yet.
• Mendiola files nothing with the BIR.