SENATORS are poised to grill Finance officials on Tuesday as the Senate Ways and Means committee resumes scrutiny of the government’s Comprehensive Tax Reform Program (CTRP), which will impose higher taxes to raise more revenue to bankroll the Duterte administration’s Build-Build-Build projects, among others.
Senator Pia Cayetano, committee chairman, confirmed that the panel has set for review Package 2+ of the CTRP setting upward rate adjustments in excise taxes on alcoholic beverages, e-cigarettes, and vapor products. The government crafted this in a determined bid to discourage consumption of various sin products among Filipinos, “especially the youth and the poor.”
Cayetano added the revenue-raising bill aims to also “ensure financial sustainability” of the government’s Universal Health Care (UHC) program.
She explained it is her job as chief of the Ways and Means Committee “to look for funding for our health programs, because I am very familiar with the needs of Filipino families.”
Cayetano, who co-sponsored passage of the original Sin Tax Reform Act of 2012 (RA 10351), added: “When it comes to sin products, these are taxed high in several countries all over the world.”
Apart from officials of the Finance and Health Departments who will present the government’s position, also expected to testify before the Senate Ways and Means panel hearing are officials from various agencies who were asked to submit their positions on the tax measure: the Department of Transportation (DOTr), Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, Philippine National Police’s Highway Patrol Group, Land Transportation Office; World Health Organization; Motorcycle Federation of the Philippines; and ImagineLaw, Inc.
Also invited were representatives from various civil society and medical organizations including Action for Economic Reforms; Health Justice; Action for Smoking and Health; Public Services International; University of the Philippines College of Medicine; Independent Health Advocate Manila Doctors Hospital; Kalusugan ng Mag-Ina; Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance; Philippine Medical Association; Philippine Society of Gastroenterology; Hepatology Society of the Philippines; Philippine College of Physicians; Philippine Academy of Family Physicians; Philippine College of Chest Physicians; Philippine Pediatric Society; Philippine Society of Clinical and Occupational Toxicology; Philippine College of Addiction Medicine; The Society of Adolescent Medicine of the Philippines; Philippine College of Occupational Medicine; Philippine Psychiatric Association; Philippine Mental Health Association; Philippine Neurological Association; Philippine Society of Medical Oncology; Philippine Heart Association; Philippine Society of General Internal Medicine; Philippine Society of Hypertension; Philippine Society of Nephrology; and Philippine Society of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, as well as women and children groups, including Child Protection Unit of the Philippine General Hospital; Safe Kids Worldwide Philippines; Commission on Women; and Child’s Rights Coalition.