MANILA (AFP) - – A builder with a reputation for winning fat government road contracts has taken multi-millionaire boxing hero Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao's title as the Philippines' top taxpayer.
Eight-time world champion Pacquiao, one of the world's biggest-earning sportsmen, fell to number 113 on the Bureau of Internal Revenue's top 500 taxpayers for 2009.
His tax due of 7.41 million pesos (about 169,000 dollars) was dwarfed by the 59.54 million-peso assessment on Elaine Gardiola, according to the list published on the bureau's website Tuesday.
World champ Pacquiao was the country's top individual taxpayer in 2008 when Gardiola was the number four, the bureau said last year without providing tax due amounts.
Local newspapers describe the new taxpayer champion, Gardiola, as the owner of a construction company named after her and based in Batangas province, south of Manila.
Her firm won 2.3 billion pesos' worth of road repair contracts from the public works ministry in the nine years to 2008, according to the Philippine Centre for Investigative Journalism, a media watchdog.
Filipinos are taxed on the basis of their declared income, not their known assets.
The list of biggest taxpayers was sprinkled with many of the country's top film stars and big businessmen.
However only one of the two Filipinos in the Forbes billionaires list this year, Henry Sy, made it to the top 10 taxpayers.
Shopping mall magnate Sy, the country's wealthiest man with a family net worth of 4.2 billion dollars according to Forbes, was the number-eight taxpayer with tax due of 25.18 million pesos (574,000 dollars).
Lucio Tan, with 1.7 billion dollars in assets according to Forbes, was only the 76th biggest taxpayer with dues of 9.2 million pesos (210,000 dollars).
Both men's firms, though, were in the top 10 of corporate income tax payers.
The bureau says just five million Filipinos pay income taxes with more than 20 million others probable tax evaders.
