Presidential candidate Senator Panfilo ‘Ping’ M. Lacson on Monday, March 14 said a Lacson presidency would rather focus on improving revenue collections by eliminating corruption to avoid encumbering Filipinos with more expenses than they could shoulder rather than raising taxes.
“New tax laws? Lunod na tayo sa tax... (We are drowning on taxes already...) Ang reporma hindi pagpapasa ng tax laws kung hindi i-plug natin ‘yung mga leakages (The reform we need is not to pass new tax laws but to plug the leakages),” Lacson, Partido Reporma standard-bearer, said in a radio interview.
In connection with this, Lacson expressed his reluctance to support House Bill 7425 or the proposed legislation to impose value added tax (VAT) on digital products and services including subscriptions to online streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, and the like.
Lacson said subjecting foreign-owned digital companies to VAT might be challenging, according to a ranking officer of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) he spoke with, who informed him that the tax agency is still in the process of trying to resolve some issues to make the bill implementable once it becomes a law.
“Madaling magpasa ng batas pero kung unimplementable ‘yung batas ay nakakapanghinayang. So, dapat pag-aralan munang mabuti ng... Anyway, tatawagin naman sila (BIR) diyan as resource persons kung ito ay House Bill at aakyat sa amin, aalamin nating mabuti [It is easy to pass a law, but if the law is unimplementable, that would be a shame. So, we need to study it carefully with... Anyway, they (BIR) will be summoned as resource persons if it is a House Bill and it reaches us in the Senate, we will take a deeper look into it),’’ the veteran lawmaker commented.
On the other hand, Lacson indicated plans to revisit some of current tax laws particularly on VAT exemptions of certain industries, which he said does not help the Philippines in generating revenues compared to other countries in Southeast Asia.
“Sa dinami-rami ng exemptions (sa VAT) doon nabawasan nang nabawasan nang nabawasanBecause we have too many exemptions (on VAT, our capacity to collect has been reduced). At ‘yung exemptions binibigay natin ito para sa mga tax holiday para makapag-engganyo tayo, makapag-attract ng mga investor pero talagang sagad-sagad na (Because we have too many exemptions {on VAT, our capacity to collect} has been reduced).And these exemptions we give it by way of tax holidays, so we can entice, we can attract more investors but I think we have already reached the limit,’’ he pointed out
“So, pinakamataas tayo at 12 percent and yet, pinakamaraming exemptions [So, we are imposing the highest (VAT) at 12-percent, and yet we grant too many exemptions). ‘Pag may exemptions pa, ‘pag nagkuwenta pa, may dayaan pa... So, ‘yon ang nakikita kong isang pwedeng gawing reporma sa ating tax, parang tax revenues, ‘yung sa tax laws—’yung sa VAT, revisit natin (And when you have exemptions, once you do the calculations, that’s where cheating can happen... So, that is what I think we can reform in our tax revenues, or our tax laws—the VAT, we need to revisit it),’’ Lacson added.
Lacson said these plans are all tied to his comprehensive digitalization program in which government transactions and processes would be streamlined and optimized via a sophisticated computer system designed to detect and prevent fraud and corruption across the board.