Every Filipino Owes P41,000
New anti-tax alliance launched; calls for debt repudiation

Every Filipino owes creditor banks and financial institutions P40,954 ($731) and this is because the Philippines currently has a P3.35 trillion ($$50 billion) in foreign debt. An alliance has been launched to oppose new taxes and to call for debt repudiation – a demand which found support from an administration congressman.

BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat

Many Filipinos are unaware that for every peso they earn they pay P0.40 to people they don’t even know.

This is because, according to Rep. Eduardo Zialcita (Lakas-CMD, Parañaque City), the country has a foreign debt burden of P3.35 trillion ($59.8 billion) as of end-2003. Given the country’s current population of 82 million and on a per capita basis, the administration congressman said Aug. 27, “every Filipino – man, woman, and child – owes creditor banks and financial institutions P40,954 ($731.32).”

“For every peso, we pay P0.40 each,” he added. “That is immoral, and even criminal.” All Filipinos “owe money to people they don’t even know.”

Speaking in a forum launching the broad-cased Alliance of Concerned Citizens Opposed to Unjust New Taxes (ACCOUNT) at the University of the Philippines-College of Social Work and Community Development (UP-CSWCD) in Diliman, Quezon, Zialcita also backed the long-standing call of cause-oriented groups and nationalist economists for the repudiation of the country’s foreign debt.

Before the government imposes new taxes, he said, it should first audit the public debt to see which of its loans are fraudulent, which are behest, and which are really beneficial – and repudiate the onerous debts.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in her State of the Nation Address (SoNA) July 26, introduced eight new revenue measures (see Bulatlat article, New Taxes will Weigh Heavily on Ordinary Filipinos) which, according to her, would remedy the country’s budget deficit. The Philippines currently suffers from an P80-billion ($1.43-billion) budget deficit.

Debt servicing presently receives the biggest annual budgetary allocation, even as the Philippine Constitution prohibits automatic appropriations for debt servicing. The military runs next in the government’s highest budgetary priorities.

“BUWISit”

In the same forum, Carmen Deunida of the progressive party-list group Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) had described the administration’s new tax proposals as “BUWISit,” apparently intending a play on the Filipino words buwis for tax and buwisit for “jinx”.

“These new tax proposals would directly hit the ordinary Filipinos – who could now hardly eat because they do not earn enough for a decent meal,” the feisty urban poor leader said.

The daily minimum wage is now P300 ($5.36), way below the P594 ($10.61) daily cost of living for a family of six or the average Filipino family, based on computations by Bulatlat’s Danilo Araña Arao. Arao used data from the National Wages and Productivity Commission for his computations.

“These amount to another killing of the Filipino people,” Deunida added.

Trixie Concepcion of Agham (Association of Science and Technology Advocates for the People) and the broad-based mobile phone users’ group TXTPower reasoned similarly.

The fastest way

Among the proposed tax measures is the shift from net income taxation to gross income taxation. But, according to former Finance Undersecretary Milwida Guevarra who also spoke at the forum, this would double or even triple the tax burden.

Deunida also called for improved tax collection. Former Budget Secretary Salvador Enriquez and former Internal Revenue Commissioner Liwayway Vinzons-Chato made similar calls.

“The country’s top tax evader, Lucio Tan, has not been punished to this day,” Deunida noted. Tan has billions of pesos in unpaid taxes dating several administrations back.

The speakers at the forum, including Gabriela Women’s Party Rep. Liza Maza who delivered the opening remarks, all took swipes at what they described as massive corruption in the government. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had recently reported that as much as 13 percent of the country’s annual budget is lost to corruption, but ACCOUNT in its Manifesto of Unity disclosed an even higher figure: 20-30 percent.

Non-tax alternatives

Bayan Muna (People First) Rep. Teddy Casiño discussed non-tax alternatives to the revenue measures: improvement in tax administration, the reversal of pro-globalization policies which he said directly affect revenues (such as fiscal incentives for foreign firms and “favored monopolies”), reduction of the public debt, crackdown on corruption in government; and the pursuit of “a sustainable, equitable and pro-Filipino development program centered on genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization.”

Meanwhile, Renato Reyes, Jr. of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance) announced that ACCOUNT will be employing Various forms of protest against the proposed revenue measures, among them rallies, noise and text barrages, and lobbying. Bulatlat

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