Marcos Jr. bidding: collect taxes properly

The day after the 16th Congress (acting as the National Board of Canvassers for the presidential and vice presidential elections) proclaimed him as the country’s next president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. held two sit-down interviews/briefings with selected media. He held one in the morning with three television networks, another one in the afternoon with selected reporters.

He talked about several issues, among them the proper collection of taxes. On this matter, he sounded cautious in the first interview/briefing, but in the second one he seemed surer of himself.

Here is how one news online report on Thursday quoted the president-in-waiting:

“The economy of the Philippines will simply not succeed, we cannot collect duties, tariffs, etc. through the (Bureau of Customs) and we do not have good collections on taxes both on the national and local level. Hindi talaga uubra. The numbers don’t match.”

“So that’s why it is very, very important,” he added, “and we have at the very least to reduce the corrosive influence of corruption in government as a general rule.”

When pressed further on the subject, however, Marcos Jr. refused to discuss the issues of corruption in the past.

“Kalimutan na lang natin ‘yung nakaraan,” he said: Forget it! “[T]hat’s not under my watch, hindi ako, hindi ako namamahala noon eh.” It wasn’t clear whether he was referring in particular to the notorious incidents during his father’s time or to all previous administrations in general.

“Ngayon ako na [ang] namamahala, so wala nang ganyan,” he assured his interviewers and audience. Now that he will be in charge, there’ll be no more corruption, hastening to add that his administration would go after erring public officials.

Speaking like outgoing President Duterte, he declared, “Kung mayroon pang ganyan eh, hahabul-habulin talaga namin kayo.”

“Hindi pwede ‘yan,” he further stated, “because [if that would be the case] we will not succeed.”

But the Inquirer online report pointed out that the Marcos family itself “has been dogged” by issues of nonpayment of their P203-billion estate tax liability, as well as Marcos Jr.’s failure to file income tax returns while he was governor of Ilocos Norte in 1982-85.

In fact, in 1995, a Quezon City regional trial court convicted Marcos Jr. for such tax evasion, in violation of the National Internal Revenue Code. The violations entail, besides imprisonment and payment of fines, the accessory penalty of “perpetual disqualification from holding public office.” This accessory penal provision became the basis of five petitions filed before the Comelec asking for his disqualification to run for the presidency.

Two of these petitions are now pending before the Supreme Court for review and decision, after the Comelec en banc had dismissed them, along with the other petitions.

In the Thursday morning interview/briefing with GMA News, Net25 and SMNI, Marcos Jr. was asked what he thought of the recommendations put forward by the outgoing Duterte government economic team to his incoming administration. The “fiscal consolidation” proposal calls for new and higher taxes plus a three-year suspension of income tax cuts to help enable the next government to repay the ballooning debts of P13 billion incurred by the Duterte regime.

Marcos Jr. replied, “It’s difficult for me to answer because I cannot talk about specifics because they will all be part of a larger economic plan. We just follow, I guess, the scientific method.”

It’s interesting to take note of what “the most prominent advocate of genuine tax reform in the country” (per Business Mirror) has to say about the Duterte economic team’s proposal and what he suggested Marcos Jr. should do. I refer to Mon Abrea, founding chairman and chief tax advisor of the Asian Consulting Group.

In an interview with ANC (posted on Facebook by ABS-CBN News on March 23), Abrea said:

“Honestly, increasing taxes will not be a good move for the new administration, considering that they still have to wean the taxpayers and help boost the economy. Burdening the small businesses even more, that would be contrary to that [priority task].”

“I think in good faith,” Abrea advised, “the president-elect should resolve first their tax issues [the P203-billion estate tax liability]. Moral ascendancy dictates that the president and his family [should] have no tax issues.”

As a second step, he advocated setting a good example: “(W)e should really run after big tax evaders.”

Taking the same strong stand against imposing new and higher taxes, the progressive alliance Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) said in a statement: “We oppose the new round of taxes proposed by the Department of Finance. The people are being made to shoulder the gigantic debt burden [P13 billion-plus] incurred by the Duterte regime. This is unjust.”

The Filipino people should not be made to shoulder the debts, Bayan said, “in the light of serious cases of corruption and procurement overpricing [of anti-COVID-19 vaccines, health care paraphernalia, among others] amounting to billions of pesos.”

Much of the newly-incurred debts are supposedly due to the pandemic, it added, “and these have raised questions on where the money actually went and how the emergency procurements were done under the Bayanihan Act [passed by Congress].”

It is likewise unjust, Bayan pointed out, to pass on the debt burden to the people in the form of new taxes “when the government is not able to improve tax collection and go after tax evaders and plug the tax leaks.”

Instead, Bayan asserted: “Government should work on taxing the super-rich rather than imposing new taxes on small consumers. This measure will now be a major test for the incoming Marcos Jr. regime.”

Two questions awaiting answers are: Can the Supreme Court resolve with finality the petitions for Marcos Jr.’s disqualification before he formally assumes office on July 1, 2022? And, in accord with his call for the proper collection of taxes, would he facilitate the resolution of his family’s P203-billion estate tax liability as a matter of helping economic recovery and, yes, moral ascendancy?

*     *      *

Email: [email protected]