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WHILE
activist students called the value-added tax (VAT)
regressive and the student subsidy drawn from it as just
a “Palace gimmick,” Malacañang loudly expressed Sunday
its suspicions those calling for the VAT to be removed,
or at least suspended from being imposed on oil and
electricity, are the rich and the “wannabe Presidents.”
Chief
presidential counsel Sergio Apostol said on radio, “If
the VAT is suspended, who will benefit—the rich or the
poor? The rich are the biggest consumers. So there’s
really no reason to suspend it.”
He was
silent on the comment by long-time political observers
and the political opposition that the VAT on power and
fuel could be removed for the poor and retained for the
rich.
In any
case, the allotment of an additional P1-billion fund for
students apparently sourced from the windfall tax on the
VAT on oil was labeled “a cheap trick to use students
and their accessibility problem to education as basis
for the justification of the widely-hated value-added
tax.”
The
Youth Against Debt (YAD) said the VAT is a burden on
consumers and thus regressive, since the poor pay more
proportionately than the rich—a VAT tax of P10 is
already the poor’s bus ride while the same amount is
mere bagatelle to the rich who can afford P2,000 to
P3,000 dinners as a matter of course.
“Mrs.
Arroyo is adding insult to injury. In a desperate
attempt to defend VAT amid strong calls to lift the
regressive tax measure on oil and power, she is using
the students and their parents’ annual school woes as
grounds for VAT’s stay,” said the anti-debt youth group
in a press statement at the weekend.
YAD said
the Department of Finance had admitted that 70 percent
of the 2-percent increase in the regular 10-percent VAT
would go to debt payments in the first six months of
implementation, with only 30 percent going to social
services and infrastructure programs.
As if in
reply, Apostol had also said on radio that the
government is already channeling back to the poor the
proceeds of the VAT on oil, beginning with the
P4-billion collection in the first four months of the
year.
“We are
already subsidizing the poor. The poor will not be
helped if the VAT is suspended. It’s another group, most
likely the prospective candidates, who will be the ones
enjoying it,” said Apostol as he insisted that the
remove-VAT proposal of some lawmakers stand to benefit
the rich “as they are the biggest consumers of fuel and
power in the country.”
Apostol
also turned a jaundiced eye on the presidential
wannabes, wondering aloud whether those seeking VAT
suspension are only after votes in the 2010 presidential
elections.
He said
that if one was to “analyze” those in favor of VAT
suspension, one would see that they are “those who have
ambitions to become President...Those calling for the
suspension, are you trying to help the nation or trying
to help yourself?”
One of
the most vocal lawmakers seeking the suspension is Sen.
Manuel Roxas II, a known presidential aspirant. |
