Ayala Corp. is bringing artificial intelligence into Philippine tax administration through a six-month partnership with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to develop an AI-powered assistant designed to help revenue personnel find and verify tax rules faster.
Under the agreement, Ayala will help establish “Terry the Tax AI Assistant” at no cost to the BIR through its Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Group.
The system will create a structured, searchable knowledge base covering tax regulations, rulings, issuances, and other official BIR materials. It will be designed to generate citation-based, source-grounded responses, allowing personnel to retrieve, cross-reference, and analyze tax authorities more efficiently.
BIR Commissioner Charlito Martin Mendoza said the technology could reduce the time revenue personnel spend searching through tax references, freeing them to focus on interpreting rules, resolving complex cases, and implementing reforms.
“For the BIR, the value of AI is not simply that it can give us answers faster. It is whether it can help our people find and verify the right authorities, make sound and defensible decisions, and move tax cases and reforms forward sooner,” Mendoza said.
The partnership represents an effort to use AI not only for automation but also to strengthen institutional knowledge and improve consistency in tax administration.
Ayala Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Group Head Karl Kendrick Chua said Terry could help government personnel respond to taxpayers with greater clarity and consistency.
BIR personnel will take part in testing, validation, and refinement of the system during the six-month engagement. The partnership will also include knowledge transfer, allowing the agency to build its capacity to further develop the technology as its requirements change.
The initiative comes as government agencies increasingly explore AI to improve public services while maintaining human oversight.
Mendoza stressed that AI will serve as a support tool rather than a substitute for government judgment, with final decisions and accountability remaining with BIR officials.
For the tax agency, the project could provide a faster way to navigate an increasingly complex body of tax rules while preserving the human judgment needed to apply them.
For Ayala, meanwhile, the partnership puts its AI capabilities to work in a high-impact government function where speed, accuracy, and traceability matter.
