DOF hits Peza for opposing Trabaho bill

Rather than appeal to President Duterte to reconsider his directive supporting corporate income tax (CIT) and fiscal incentives reform, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) should explain to Filipino taxpayers why it insists on subsidizing at their expense the multi-billion peso dividends and profits of large corporations that do not actually need such perks, a Department of Finance (DOF) official said.

Finance Assistant Secretary Antonio Joselito Lambino II said the Duterte administration’s proposal is to rationalize tax incentives now enjoyed by a select group of mostly big businesses located in large cities, and level the playing field for some 90,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) all over the country that currently pay the CIT rate of 30 percent.

Lambino explained that the second package of the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program (CTRP) is not eliminating tax incentives altogether, as the proposed bill will continue to provide incentives to businesses, including SMEs, that will lead to increased investment inflows and create more jobs.

“Peza (Director General Charito Plaza) is free to talk to the President. But the President already approved this comprehensive tax reform program as early as January 2018 in a Cabinet meeting and reiterated this in his State of the Nation Address (Sona). We should not stand in the way of a presidential directive,” Lambino said.

Lambino was responding to reports quoting Plaza as saying that she will talk to the President about her misgivings over the CIT reform bill now pending in Congress.

Contrary to Plaza’s claim that neither Peza nor its locators were consulted in the crafting of Package 2, Finance Undersecretary Karl Chua recalled that several consultations were held with Peza and other stakeholders.

“In fact, we took into consideration Peza’s comments, which was why several changes were made to the original Package 2 proposal,” Chua said. “During our consultations with Director General Plaza, she even agreed to the prin- ciples of Package 2—that it be performance-based, targeted, time bound and transparent.”

Chua said he was puzzled that Plaza had changed her mind and is now opposing the tax reform bill.

Following such consultations with Peza officials and industry players, Chua said several adjustments were made to Package 2 to take into account their concerns.

These adjustments include retaining Peza’s power to extend incentives to most projects, keeping the one-stop-shop function, and retaining the provision “in lieu of local business taxes” on the grant of special rates for locators.

The House of Representatives approved last Sept. 10 its version of the CTRP Package 2 dubbed the Tax Reform for Attracting Better and Higher-quality Opportunities Act (Trabaho). The Senate, meanwhile, is still deliberating on the CIT reform bill introduced by Sen. President Vicente Sotto III, and called the Corporate Income Tax and Incentives Reform Act.

Chua made it clear that the DOF remains open to discuss with Peza officials their lingering concerns about Package 2, in keeping with the President’s call to have this tax reform signed into law by the end of the year.

Lambino said that the status quo of dangling tax incentives as a band-aid solution to make up for the structural defects of the business environment, which the government has been doing for over 50 years, has not encouraged export diversification and innovation.

“Instead, the outcomes are corporate geese fattened from incentives granted forever, declining export competitiveness, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows that remain lackluster if compared to our neighboring countries,” Lambino said.

Earlier, the DOF said that for 2015 alone, the government gave away P86.3 billion worth of income tax incentives to firms that paid out a total of P141.8 billion combined in dividends to their respective shareholders.

Data from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and those reported by investment promotion agencies (IPAs) as mandated under the Tax Incentives Management and Transparency Act (Timta) show that these declared dividends were 164 percent of the income tax incentives received by firms from various sectors.

Such data showing that certain enterprises declared dividends that are way above the tax perks they receive from the government prove that many of them are inherently profitable and no longer need such perks for their businesses to prosper here in the Philippines, Lambino said. /

We should not stand in the way of a presidential directive. ANTONIO JOSELITO LAMBINO II

Finance Assistant Secretary