Poor Filipinos stand to benefit from the proposal of the Department of Finance (DOF) to hike fuel excise taxes, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and Neda Director General Ernesto M. Pernia told reporters that higher fuel taxes mean more government revenues most of which can be used to address the needs of the poor.
“The philosophy is there should be burden sharing for the sake of nation-building, for the economy to develop, and to reduce poverty. Actually, the poor are the ones who are going to benefit from more revenues,” Pernia said.
The Neda chief threw his support behind the DOF’s plan to hike excise taxes for gasoline to P10 per liter from the current P4.53 per liter. The DOF also proposed to hike excise taxes for diesel to P6 per liter from P5.35 per liter. Pernia said there are also proposals to make the excise-tax rate the same for diesel and gasoline because many big cars use diesel.
“[It will have an impact on the labor force] but now is a good time to do that because of the low price of oil,” Pernia said.
Based on the 2012 Family Income and Expenditure Survey, Filipinos spent P73.987 billion in cash and in kind for fuel and lubricants.
This is composed of P73.312 billion worth of cash expenses for fuel and lubricants in 2012 and P675 million in in-kind expenses.
This is the largest expense under the operation of personal transport equipment, which amounted to a total of P93.168 billion cash and in-kind expenses in 2012.
In terms of taxes, Filipinos spent a total of P85.952 billion in 2012. The largest component of this is income taxes worth P79.973 billion, followed by real-estate taxes at P4.705 billion.
The smallest component of this amount is classified under other direct taxes, which amounted to P1.273 billion in 2012.