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SPEAKER
Prospero Nograles is asking President Arroyo to certify
as urgent several tax-relief measures in the House of
Representatives.
In
addition, Nograles said that in the wake of global
economic crunch, the House would give priority to
deliberations on House Bill (HB) 3971, increasing
personal-tax exemptions for individual taxpayers.
The
House ways and means committee had earlier approved the
measure at its level, citing the urgency of giving tax
relief to the people.
Under HB
3971, the personal exemptions for single individuals
(now P20,000), or those married but legally separated
with no qualified dependents head of the family (now
P25,000), and each married individual (P32,000) would be
pegged at P50,000. Exemptions for dependents not
exceeding four would be increased to P25,000 each from
the current amount of P8,000.
HB 3971
is a substitute bill consolidating some 20 separate but
related measures proposing to amend certain provisions
of Republic Act 8424, or the National Internal Revenue
Code of 1997.
“The
proposed amendments to the tax code should provide
financial relief to taxpayers during these difficult
times brought about by a confluence of domestic and
international factors resulting from the global
food-production slowdown, the spiraling crude-oil prices
and the heightening inflationary pressure on various
commodities, especially food and transport services,”
said Nograles.
Besides
HB 3971, the committee is also finalizing a companion
tax measure called Simplified Net Income Taxation
(Snits) under HB 1809, authored by Deputy Speaker Eric
Singson, which would simplify the system of taxation for
self-employed individuals.
Singson,
in his explanatory note, said, “After six years [since
1998] of implementing the 1997 tax reform law [RA 8424],
income collections from self-employed grew by only 6.77
percent versus 19.86 percent prior to the effectivity of
the Comprehensive Tax Reform Package [CTRP].”
“It can
only be deduced that the so-called hard-to-tax groups do
not report items of income, do not issue receipts,
overcharge their allowable deductions or do not file
income tax at all,” Singson said.
He added
that only 2.6 percent of income taxes come from the
hard-to-tax groups, while fixed income or compensation
earners account for 97.4 percent of the total individual
taxes collected.
Meanwhile, authors of HB 3971 said it has been 10 years
since the last adjustment on personal and additional
exemptions were granted to individual taxpayers.
It is
also provided that no withholding tax is required where
the total gross annual compensation income of an
individual does not exceed the proposed total personal
and additional exemptions.
“I
believe that the Senate is one with us on this very
important piece of legislation,” Nograles said. |
