Minority to block new taxes

The Senate minority will oppose the imposition of any new tax by the government, Senate Minority Leader Teofisto Guingona declared yesterday.

He issued the statement following proposals to impose new taxes on idle lands, land conversion, reclassification of motor vehicles, cellular phones, road use, reformed value-added tax, motels, and even on bottled water.

"They are not even collecting the current tax. Now they want to impose new taxes. The Senate minority will never allow this," he stressed.

Guingona said in his program aired over Radyo Bisig Bayan that more efficient tax collection, not the imposition of new taxes, is the best way to attain fiscal balance.

He charged that because of the inefficiency and lack of political will of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Bureau of Customs, the budget deficit last year had ballooned to P113.6 billion.

"The government is just like a family spending P15,000 a month on a monthly income of P10,000," he observed.

He noted that the BIR has not even collected the P23-billion estate tax declared by the courts as due from the estate of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

"The P23-billion estate tax on the Marcoses is now final, executory and demandable, according to a court ruling in 1997. Yet the BIR has not done anything," he said, as he assailed the BIR for its alleged "lack of political will."

He said that he would seek categorical answers from new Finance Secretary Jose Pardo on revenue collections when they meet this morning at the bicameral conference committee meeting on the 2000 national budget.