Digital entrepreneurs as heroes

In our radio program, Executive Session, aired by dzrh, we discussed the sad plight of Filipino online sellers in the face of a “threat” by the Department of Finance (DOF) to tax their earnings from e-commerce.

Senators Miguel Zubiri and Sherwin Gatchalian also criticized the plan of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), which is under the DOF, calling it “ill-timed, insensitive and unnecessary.”

The good Senators have a point. At this time when Filipinos are doing their best to survive the impact of the COVID 19 crisis on the economy, taxing Filipino online sellers would be like telling their families to have less food on their dining table.

The thousands of Filipinos who recently entered the world of e-commerce are not your cut-and-dried businessmen who want to rake in a handsome profit by taking advantage of the restrictions on human movement and mobility.

These newly-minted digital entrepreneurs are like “evacuees” or “exiles” in a raging war that destroyed their means of livelihood.

They are not doing business online to become rich—they sell online to have something to eat today and to help their families live another day.

If the DOF would take a closer look at these online entrepreneurs, it would discover that these are Filipinos who lost their jobs or whose businesses had to fold up due to the unprecedented health crisis we now face.

They are former employees, erstwhile baristas, working students, sales crew of food establishments that had closed down. Some used to be event organizers, public performers or trainers whose business died as soon as the government banned public gatherings.

Some are basketball players who, just months ago, had live contracts with teams included in a major league. With the ban on sports events, many are now on hand-to-mouth existence and some turn to selling food items, nutritional supplements and whatever goods that can be peddled using social media.

In many ways, these Filipinos are “heroes”—at least to their families. They endure the “embarrassment” that come with the transition from celebrity to online seller of cooked or frozen food.

Many of them have not been spared from the occasional “bashing” by netizens who call attention to the fact that the person selling embutido online used to be a manager or a corporate executive.

The sudden growth of the digital entrepreneur sector should be seen as a bright spot.

This phenomenon shows that many Filipinos who lost their jobs and livelihood have chosen a positive and proactive response to the crisis.

Philippine social media is crowded by posts about food items like leche flan, sushi, longganisa being sold or resold. This is good news. This means Filipinos are actively finding ways to survive instead of complain about the current situation.”

Digital entrepreneurs, particularly the newbies, have become some kind of an informal yet powerful community in the online world. In this community they help each other, buy from each other, and promote each other’s products.

We hope the DOF is not entertaining the notion that these small businessmen are like the giant Amazon and its local counterparts. Far from it.

What we hope the DOF would note is that this community of online sellers and resellers are the embodiment of the “bayanihan” spirit.

This is bayanihan to survive as one.”

While we respect the views of members of the Inter Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases that the government needs to replenish its coffers to fund various public programs, we hope the DOF would reconsider the move to tax them during the crisis.

The DOF-BIR’S “insensitivity” to the plight of the small entrepreneur—as pointed out by the two Senators—is a stark contrast to the approach adopted by some of our solons in the past.

When dealing with taxation issues, their strategy was to tax luxury items to alleviate the situation of the poor or help the underprivileged.

We recall that when the government needed to fund the requirements of then proposed Universal Healthcare Law, then Sen. JV Ejercito, moved to raise the excise tax on cigarettes.

Sen. Ejercito had to contend with the strong lobby and public relations campaign of tobacco interest groups which attempted to derail the passage of the proposed law.

Solons like Ejercito—who was then chair of the Senate committee on economic affairs - stood up against the lobby.

When the bill was finally passed, funding was assured for the Universal Healthcare Law, his pet bill.

That’s the right approach to taxation. It did not unduly add to the burden of the poor and underprivileged. Instead, it helped better their lives and gave them access to decent and adequate healthcare.