By Prinz Magtulis (The Philippine Star)
| Updated September 19, 2016 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines - Only 14 percent of
the government’s total revenues come from self-employed individuals and
professionals, burdening salary workers with huge levies which the government
reiterated will be addressed.
“We have high tax rates for self-employed
and professionals, yet we have a very narrow base among them,” Department of
Finance spokesperson Paola Alvarez said in a statement over the weekend.
The figure has consistently gone down
from 34 percent in the 1980s and down to around a fifth of entire revenues in
the 1990s, she said, citing Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) data.
In contrast, wage earners have
contributed more than 60 percent to revenues which has risen over the past
three decades.
No absolute figures were provided or
were immediately available as of press time.
The Duterte administration is submitting
the first of four packages comprising its comprehensive tax reform program to
Congress over the next two weeks for approval.
Aside from it, separate measures to
relax the bank secrecy law and make tax evasion a predicate crime of money
laundering are also being threshed out, Alvarez said.
These bills, she said, aim to give more
power to the BIR to look into bank accounts of those with pending tax evasion
cases, without the need to ask for separate permission from the courts.
“The Bureau of Internal Revenue,
however, cannot fully audit them because of existing bank secrecy laws,”
Alvarez said.
“In relaxing bank secrecy laws, we want
to cover all types of accounts, whether they pertain to deposits or
investments, or to peso and dollar accounts,” she said.
The same case is being eyed on plans to
amend the country’s dirty money laws.
“We also want to include the crime of
tax evasion as a predicate crime to money laundering, so we can catch the big
tax evaders and haul them to court,” the spokesperson said.
Similar moves to ease bank secrecy and
tighten money laundering laws have failed during the latter part of the
previous administration, which has rejected outright lowering of income levies
without offsetting potential revenue losses.
President Duterte has made it his
campaign promise to bring down income taxes to a high of 25 percent from 32
percent for individuals, and to 25 percent from 30 percent for corporations.
According to initial figures which may
still be revised, the comprehensive tax reform plan is estimated to generate
net additional revenues of P368 billion by 2019.
“From now until the end of the month, we
are conducting a series of consultations to further refine this proposal,”
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez was quoted as saying in a separate
statement.
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