THE chairman of the House ways and means committee on Sunday described as “scary” the Palace-proposed tax reforms that would impose excise taxes on petroleum products and remove the tax exemptions on senior citizens and 13th-month salaries.
“The planned tax imposition on petroleum products is scary and at first glance would add to the burden of the taxpayers,” Rep. Dakila Carlo Cua said.
“So we have to be really careful and study its repercussion on our taxpayers.”
He said he would rather that the government abandoned the plan to remove the exemption of senior citizens from the value-added tax.
Cua said his panel was still validating the data submitted by Finance after House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said the House would reject its tax-reform package for being anti-poor.
As of Sunday, not one lawmaker was interested in being the author of the Finance-proposed tax bill.
Cua said the P10 billion in revenues that the government had been losing as a result of the VAT exemption of senior citizens was due to the “abuses” being committed by some senior citizens and establishments that are required to remit the VAT to the Treasury.
“The figure did not come from the [Finance Department]. It came from an independent group that told me around P10 billion is lost due to abuses,” Cua said.
“It is not only senior citizens but also establishments that abuse the exemption. But this we have yet to validate,” Cua told dzBB without elaborating.
“It has to be a non-emotional decision. It has to be a decision based on research.”
Finance also plans to raise the excise tax on gasoline to P10 per liter from P4.35, and the zero tax on diesel and other petroleum products to P6 per liter.
The proposal covers the restructuring of the excise tax on automobiles except for buses, trucks, cargo vans, jeeps, jeepney substitutes and special purpose vehicles.
