ps - Junk Sin Tax Bill - rally at DoF

PRESS STATEMENT

09 November 2012

Militant Labor Hold Rally at the Department of Finance to Demand the Junking of the Sin Tax and Raise Corporate Tax Instead 

Irate workers and ambulant vendors belonging to Peoples Coalition Against Regressive Taxation (PCART) trooped to the Department of Finance (DOF) today to condemn the department for prodding the Senate Ways and Means Committee chairman Senator Franklin Drilon to execute the government's plan to raise forty to forty-five billion pesos by legislating a new sin tax law.

The militant workers labeled the DOF as a butcher of their jobs and livelihoods. They likewise  urged the department to tax the rich and not the poor, a central principle in taxation. The DOF is the government's primary agency that designed and convinced legislators to enact a new sin tax law to fulfill the government's fiscal requirements.

According to Gie Relova, Secretary-General of Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino-National Capital Region and Rizal chapter (BMP-NCRR),  "Secretary Cesar Purisima has only displayed its insensitivity to the Filipino workers and farmers by pushing for a regressive tax measure that will displace more than three million already productive Filipinos while the tycoons continue reap billions of pesos in profit". 

"The tycoons and traders should be the only targets of the government's taxation schemes and not the general public because logic dictates that they are the ones with the capacity to pay unlike the workers and farmers or the end-consumers. The government must instead pursue raising corporate taxes", the labor leader added. 

While JC Gatungay, Chairperson of Samahan ng mga Manininda sa Komunidad, an organization of sari-sari store owners claim that they are unconvinced with the pending sin tax bill because of the government's schizophrenic programs. On one hand, it spends billions of pesos in promoting micro, small and medium enterprises at the same time pursuing an unjust sin tax measures that will inevitably destroy already established livelihoods and local industries.

The coalition reiterated its call to totally scrap the sin tax bills because of its regressive nature and will be a financial burden shouldered by end-consumers and not by the tobacco and alcohol tycoons.