Group readies protests against text tax bill

As it rejected suggestions to merely revise the five-centavo text tax bill, a militant consumers' group is readying protest actions to call for the junking of the measure. “Five centavos per text may be too small for Rep. Danilo Suarez and Malacañang, but for the majority who are already overtaxed and overstressed by the daily terror of trying to survive on shrinking incomes, any new tax is unacceptable. Ordinary Filipinos are unlike Rep. Danilo Suarez who can whimsically treat the President to a $15,000 dinner," said TXTPower head Anthony Ian Cruz. Cruz said his group would announce on Monday a series of protest actions against the text tax. The group is expecting Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, Albay Gov. Jose Salceda, and lawmakers to join consumers against the text tax, according to Cruz.

TXTPower said the government should instead impose one percent tax hike on the country's top 1,000 companies and spare the poor from any new taxes. Cruz emphasized that ordinary Filipinos, especially consumers, already pay 12 percent value-added tax on products and services, including prepaid cell phone load and subscriptions. He twitted the House of Representatives for allegedly claiming that the bill would prevent telecom firms from passing on the burden to consumers. “Not only did the House had the nerve to lie about the so-called no-pass-on provision which does not exist in the approved bill, it is insulting the public by trying to make us all believe that such a provision will prevent telcos from doing accounting hocus-pocus to pass on the text tax to consumers," he said. Cruz said consumers should demand that government fulfill its mandate to protect consumers. “The Arroyo administration is perhaps the only government in the world to push for a new and regressive tax in the middle of a worldwide economic crisis. Instead of helping the people through safety nets, the Arroyo government wants to kill the people through a new tax," he said. “We want a return out of the VAT we pay. Some of the things we want to see is for Congress to take steps to lower prices of cellphone calls and text, to improve services provided by the telcos and to prosecute those who abuse consumers," he added. For its part, Malacañang reiterated its "no pass-on to consumers" stance on the proposed tax on text messages. "The administration did say and did throw its support behind the 'no pass-on provision,'" said presidential spokesman on economic affairs Gary Olivar, in a Palace statement. Olivar said the proposed tax on text did not originate from Malacañang. "Those original measures had the benefit of close study by the Department of Finance, including very clear and well-measured estimates of the revenue impact on each of those measures. I'm not sure if the text tax measure had the benefit of such a close study, at least on the Executive side," he said. Telcos have a lot of room to earn from text transactions as shown by the big difference between the normal text tariff of P1 and the unlimited text tariff of P0.10, according to Olivar. - GMANews.TV