Chiz vows lower income tax if Poe becomes president

MANILA, Philippines - Millions of workers nationwide were promised higher salaries by the last quarter of next year if Sen. Grace Poe becomes president.

Sen. Francis Escudero, Poe’s vice presidential running mate, said the reduction of income tax rates will form part of her priorities in her first 100 days in office, consistent with the plan to install a “government with a heart.”

“I know that it is hard to raise salaries, but even if that could not be done, the take-home pay of our people could become bigger if taxes are lowered,” he said in Filipino.

The former chairman of the Senate committee on finance is pushing for lower income taxes to boost  workers’ take-home pay and help them keep up with the rising cost of living.

“Senator Grace’s and my objective is to lower taxes and pass that bill in the first 100 days of her term to show and prove that from start to end that the government we would like to establish has a heart,” he said in Filipino.

Escudero said lowering income tax, which at 32 percent is the highest in Southeast Asia, is the best way to ease the burden of salaried workers, who pay the biggest chunk of the total income tax.

Recently, the Senate and the House of Representatives each approved on final reading the proposed Salary Standardization Law (SSL) of 2015, which mandates a P226-billion compensation hike spread over four years for the national government’s 1.53 million civilian, military and uniformed personnel.

Escudero said the government must go beyond raising the salary of state workers by lowering income tax rates, a move that would also benefit the private sector that employs most of the country’s workforce.

Around 39 million people are in the nation’s labor force, of which 36 million are in the private sector.

In last five years, private sector workers have received minimal pay hikes, the latest of which was in April this year when the National Wages and Productivity Commission implemented a P15 adjustment in the daily minimum wage in Metro Manila, raising the minimum pay to P481 for workers in the non-agriculture sector, Escudero said.