By Recto Mercene & Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz
The leadership of the House of Representatives last Sunday expressed confidence that the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) bill will be finalized and enacted before Congress goes on a Christmas break this week.
Majority Leader Rodolfo C. Fariñas Sr. of the First District of Ilocos Norte and House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Dakila Carlo E. Cua of of the Lone District of Quirino said the congressional bicameral conference committee tackling the Duterte administration’s tax-reform program is eyeing to finish the bill on Monday.
“We hope to finish [the tax-reform bill] tomorrow [Monday] and have a final bicameral committee version of the measure,” Cua said.
Fariñas said the Senate and the House have until December 13 to pass the tax-reform bill and submit it to Malacañang for President Duterte’s signature.
“The target is, of course, on Wednesday, December 13, at the latest. That is, if the bicameral conference committee will be able to resolve conflicting provisions in the [tax-reform bill],” Fariñas said.
Over the weekend, Sen. Juan Edgardo M. Angara, chairman of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, said members of the bicameral committee have already agreed on 75 key provisions, or 90 percent, of the tax-reform bill.
However, still pending before the bicameral committee are “contentious” provisions which include excise taxes on coal, minerals and cosmetic procedures, which were inserted by the Senate.
Earlier, Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez vowed to block Senate insertions of the additional taxes, particularly on coal, as they run counter to the constitutional mandate that all revenue measures must originate exclusively from the House of Representatives.
Article VI, Section 24 of the Philippine Constitution, which provides “all appropriation, revenue or tariff bills, bills authorizing increase of the public debt, bills of local application, and private bills, shall originate exclusively in the House of Representatives, but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments.”
The Senate passed “a 3,000-percent increase in coal taxes” to be collected in three tranches until 2020, while adopting a 10-percent excise tax on cosmetic procedures for aesthetic purposes.
The senators also want to double excise taxes on minerals and mineral products and quarry resources.
The proposed TRAIN Act is targeting to raise P130 billion in revenues to finance the Duterte administration’s ambitious infrastructure program. The bicameral conference committee is composed of members from each House of Congress—both from the majority and minority blocs—to settle, reconcile or thresh out differences or disagreements
on any provision of the bill.
Once the bicameral committee finalizes its version of the bill, the measure will immediately be transmitted to the Senate and the House for ratification and will be submitted to Malacañang.
The congressional committee should approve the consolidated version of tax reform this week to ensure its passage before Congress goes on Christmas break on December 13. The government is eyeing to implement TRAIN by January 1, 2018.
Concerns of farmers
Former Labor Secretary Ruben D. Torres of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) affirmed over the weekend the TUCP supports the appeal of various farmers’ organizations opposing the inclusion of tobacco tax in Package 1 of the TRAIN bill. Torres, who now heads the TUCP, and former Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor of the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF), joined the Philippine Tobacco Growers Association in airing serious concerns over the backlash of the plan to raise tobacco excise tax anew.
They said this will result in a “significant” drop in crop production, reduction of farmlands planted with tobacco and loss of jobs following the “yearly exorbitant hike” in tobacco tax since 2013.
The concerned groups conveyed their appeals in separate letters to the Senate Ways and Means Committee chairman, Angara, citing dire prospects from any drastic increase that would be “damaging to the economic situation” of both the tobacco farming and labor sectors.
Citing data from data from the National Tobacco Administration (NTA), Torres said that in 2015 alone, the number of workers in the tobacco industry was reduced by 9,232.
“Another related NTA report shows that there was also a decline in the area of the land planted with tobacco from 38,264 hectares in 2014 to only 32,761 hectares in 2015, or more than 5,500 hectares abandoned,” he added.
FFF, headed by Montemayor, noted that almost 1,000 full-time positions in the manufacturing sector were lost since the enactment of the “sin” tax law of 2012, or Republic Act 10351. He noted that several hundred workers will lose their jobs following the announcement of British American Tobacco in November that it will close its operations in the Philippines.