MALACAÑANG maintained on Friday that President Aquino remains unfazed by concerns that his refusal to consider a compromise on long-pending income-tax reforms could backfire on his anointed candidate Manuel A. Roxas II’s 2016 presidential bid.
The Palace conveyed confidence that President Aquino’s steadfast rejection of the tax relief compromise to adjust the 19-year-old income- tax brackets would not sink Roxa’s chances in next year’s polls.
Malacañang officials shrugged off warnings that President Aquino’s hardline stance against a tax-rate cut, or even at least the tax-bracket adjustments being pushed by his Congress allies will turn off voter taxpayers, as well as their voting age dependents.
“The President believed he is doing right by his bosses and that people will be fair in judging his administration,” Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. said on Friday.
Coloma recalled that President Aquino affirming his resistance to pending proposals in the Senate and the House providing downward adjustments in personal and corporate income taxes, as well as taxation brackets set nearly 20 years ago.
He cited President Aquino’s statement before foreign correspondents on why he is rejecting the proposed tax reforms.
“President Aquino believes in wholistic and comprehensive tax reforms and is determined to stay the course until the end of his term,” Coloma said.
Roxas assailed
A PARTY-LIST coalition assailed Roxas for his continued opposition to the growing clamor to reduce income taxes and claimed that he is already showing signs of “dictatorial tendencies” with seven months to go before the elections.
Speaking before the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Roxas said the lowering of income taxes should not be an electoral issue and must be discussed in a more sober time.
In an e-mailed statement, Sanlakas party-list group said that “Roxas’s statement gives a clear and frightening picture of what is to come if he is elected.” The group said it found it alarming that a candidate for the presidency is not only stonewalling a long overdue and legitimate grievance of a tax-burdened electorate but is also dismissing it as a nonissue in the upcoming elections.
“Elections are an integral part in any democratic state. It is the people who decide which relevant issues to throw at candidates and which of the candidates’ platform will uplift them from destitution and be worthy of their votes,” Aaron Pedrosa, secretary-general of Sanlakas said.
He added, “Roxas must recognize that the electoral campaign is not exclusive to aspirants running for public office, but also a democratic process where organized communities and interest groups can avail [themselves] of the democratic space to influence politicians and policy-makers.”
Roxas was reported to be the only major presidential candidate that has openly spoken against lowering taxes. His running mate, Liberal Party Rep. Leni Robredo of Camarines Sur, has also joined the chorus for tax reforms.
Pedrosa insisted that, “For Roxas to insist ‘a more sober time’ to discuss the validity of the arguments for income-tax reduction is equal to prolonging the misery of ordinary wage earners. This only reveals his detachment from the plight of millions of Filipino families.”
“While the administration has, time and again, failed the workers by not enabling the constitutional right to a living wage, the least it could do is to remove taxes to incomes that are below the daily cost of decent living,” he added.
The group also demanded that the government cease granting incentives to foreign multinational corporations, a result of laws authored by Roxas himself during his stint as legislator to offset whatever fiscal impacts the reduction of income taxes will incur.
“For as long as he positions himself opposite to the interests of the poor majority of the Filipino nation. Roxas will be farthest in the minds of the 41 million labor force come election day,” Pedrosa said.
Roxas, an investment banker by profession, authored and co-authored numerous procorporate, antipoor decrees, including the Liberalization of Foreign Investments in 1996, the Oil Deregulation Law in 1998, the Special Economic Zone Act of 1995, the Regional Headquarters Incentives for Multinational Companies of 1999 and the infamous Expanded Value Added Tax law in 2005. In 2008 Roxas also supported the ratification of the “severely lopsided” Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement, or Jpepa.
Sanlakas party-list group has consistently criticized Roxas’s leading role in implementing neoliberal economic policies since his days in Congress.