SENATORS Bam Aquino and Pia Cayetano urged the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to address privacy concerns over its registration badge requirement for online sellers and content creators.
Aquino said the BIR should first listen to affected sellers and creators, who fear the badge’s embedded QR code could expose personal information, including their full legal names.
“We urge the BIR to temporarily suspend the Registration Seal Badge requirement. Let us first listen to the concerns of online sellers and content creators,” Aquino said on a social media post.
In a separate statement, Cayetano said online sellers and digital content creators had raised valid concerns over the potential disclosure of personal information through the QR code.
Cayetano said she had brought the issue to the National Privacy Commission (NPC), whose budget she is handling in the Senate, and urged concerned agencies to resolve the matter before the Oct. 31 compliance deadline.
BIR Commissioner Charlito Martin Mendoza said the badge must be displayed only on accounts used for business or professional purposes, not on purely personal accounts.
Mendoza acknowledged the privacy risks and said the BIR was coordinating with the NPC to establish safeguards for the verification system “without compromising taxpayer privacy or personal safety.”
He also clarified that taxpayers would not be penalized solely for failing to display the badge during the extension period.
The BIR introduced the badge as an alternative to publicly displaying a full Certificate of Registration (COR) or electronic COR on websites, online shops and social media business pages.
The full registration document contains tax registration details that taxpayers previously had to make publicly accessible to comply with online registration rules.
The badge allows customers and other authorized parties to check registration through its QR code without requiring the entire document to be posted online.
The requirement covers online sellers, e-commerce merchants, digital service providers, freelancers, vloggers, content creators and influencers.
The badge must be prominently displayed on business websites, e-commerce and marketplace pages, social media accounts used for business, and other digital platforms.
The BIR later extended the compliance deadline to Oct. 31 through Revenue Memorandum Circular 99-2026, giving covered taxpayers additional time to secure and display the badge.
The agency said the badge is free, although taxpayers who need to update their registration details online must pay a P30 documentary stamp tax.
As of Oct. 14, more than 52,700 certificates of registration with the new badges had been secured by online sellers, service providers and content creators, according to the BIR.
