A P2.9-billion tax assessment against Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada before the Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) has been dismissed.

The second division reversed the 2001 tax assessment of former internal revenue commissioner Lilia Hefti amounting to P2,905,048,539.58, Estrada’s lawyer Ferdinand Topacio said yesterday.

It granted Estrada and his wife Loi’s petition for review of the BIR’s tax assessment, he added.

The justices have ruled that the BIR had violated the rights of Estrada when it used documents that were never presented before the court, Topacio said, citing parts of the decision.

The tax assessment was based on the Jose Velarde account that Estrada allegedly owned, he added.

It was one of the bases for the plunder complaints filed against Estrada.

The CTA ruled that the judgment in the plunder case filed in the Sandiganbayan cannot apply for purposes of taxation as no identity of parties between the cases existed, Topacio said.

The CTA has yet to release a copy of the ruling.

Estrada sees the dismissal of the case against him as a “good Christmas gift for me.”

In a telephone interview with The STAR, Estrada said the CTA ruling is “long overdue.”

“Finally, after how many years I got the justice that I deserve,” he said.

He has been vindicated and that the case has no basis, Estrada said.

“The truth will always come out,” he said.

Everyone has already apologized to him, including the late former President Corazon Aquino and the Catholic Church, for conspiring with the elite to remove him as president in 2001, Estrada said.

The Jose Velarde account was one of the many pieces of evidence that the government used in filing criminal charges against Estrada.

In September 2007, the Sandiganbayan special division handed down a guilty verdict against Estrada for plunder.

However, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pardoned Estrada in October 2007 and restored his “full civil and political rights.”

Estrada then went all over the country and conducted his “Lakbay Pasasalamat” to thank the Filipino people who had supported him. – Janvic Mateo, Jose Rodel Clapano