House Independent Bloc leader and Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez on Saturday expressed hope that President Benigno Aquino III will show ‘malasakit’ [compassion] to his “bosses” by agreeing to prioritize the congressional passage of a bill updating income tax brackets.
Romualdez, a lawyer and president of the Philippine Constitution Association, said he believes that the scheduled meeting of Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. and Senate President Franklin Drilon with President Aquino next week will yield positive results.
“I wish them good luck and hope for the best that the meeting could yield positive results,” said Romualdez, a senatorial candidate of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance. “A good outcome of the meeting means malasakit to our ordinary workers.”
The scheduled meeting next week between congressional leaders and Aquino came after the Tax Management Association of the Philippines and 21 groups submitted a compromise tax cut bill.
Belmonte said he himself is hopeful that he will bear “good news” after meeting with the President next week after he was able to put on the agenda with Aquino.
“The Senate President and I will meet the President on Monday, and among the important things we [will discuss will be] income tax. The version pending with us is an indexation of the values of the amount mentioned, without changing the rates of the particular taxes,” Belmonte said.
TMAP president Terence Conrad Bello earlier said that “while a compromise proposal involving only the updating of the tax brackets is not what TMAP and its coalition partners had in mind, TMAP believes that the compromise proposal will immediately alleviate somehow the plight of salaries of individuals who are overtaxed under the current system.”
Signatories to the TMAP proposal include the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Canadian Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, Korean Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines and Australia-New Zealand Chamber and Commerce of the Philippines.
Government data show the Philippines has the second highest individual income tax rate in the region at 32 percent next to Thailand and Vietnam’s 35 percent, and the highest value added tax at 12 percent as the country’s current individual income tax bracket has remained unchanged since 1997.
To address this, the TMAP appealed to Congress to pass their proposed version of the measure intended to increase the take-home pay of Filipino workers.