The year Chief Justice Renato Corona supposedly bought the classy 303.5-square-meter penthouse worth P14 million in The Bellagio in Taguig City, he paid a withholding tax of P155,556.20 and earned a gross income of only P621,528.62.
Another senator-judge from the Liberal Party had to stand up to elicit this information from a witness on Wednesday.
This time, a seemingly impatient Senator Ralph Recto raised his hand and began asking Kim Jacinto-Henares, commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, about Corona’s tax payments at the height of a verbal tussle between defense counsel Serafin Cuevas and private prosecutor Arthur Lim.
In a series of questions to Henares, Recto elicited figures on tax deductions from the so-called “alpha” lists that government agencies and private companies submit detailing income tax deductions of their personnel after Lim failed to extract these because of defense objections supported by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, the presiding officer.
Cuevas questioned the relevance of the presentation of a so-called alpha list the Supreme Court provides yearly to the BIR. The list details the income earned by “local employees” of a government office as well as the withholding tax taken from their salaries as provided by Section 51 of the National Internal Revenue Code.
Henares explained that since Corona’s compensation and withholding taxes are reported in the tribunal’s alpha list, he no longer had to file income tax returns (ITRs) like other taxpayers.
Lim explained that Henares was presented to the impeachment court to testify on Corona’s earnings from 2002 when he was appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court up to 2010.
Then outgoing President Gloria Arroyo named Corona, her former chief of staff and legal adviser, as Chief Justice in May 2010.
Henares was summoned to the court on Day 6 of the trial to provide copies of ITR declarations, but it turned out that Corona had not been filing these and she had no such documents. Instead, she said she had the alpha list.
Under Recto’s questioning, Henares said that in 2006, based on the alpha submissions, Corona’s withholding tax amounted to P109,706.60 on gross compensation of P465,597.
Other details from the list showed Corona paid P117,399.31 from his P488,156.57 income in 2007; P154,057.75 from an income of P604,388.46 in 2008; P155,556.20 from an income of P621,528.62 in 2009 and P176,577.32 from gross earnings of P657,755.57 in 2010.
Recto later told the court he did not intend to aid the prosecution. “It pains me that the parties here seem not to understand each other. That’s the only reason why I stood up,” Recto explained.
Last week, the defense panel accused Recto’s Liberal Party ally, Senator Franklin Drilon of “substituting” for the prosecution, and said it was considering filing a motion to get Drilon to inhibit himself from the proceedings for being biased.
Drilon last week prompted the Supreme court clerk of court, Enriqueta Esguerra-Vidal, to release Corona’s statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs) to the Senate although she did not have the tribunal’s authorization to hand them out.
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