Bayan Muna to DOH: Why resurrect the Asin Tax?

Imposing taxes on food with high salt content would be detrimental to poor Filipinos as it will only jack up the prices of commodities they consume most of the time, Bayan Muna party-list Representative Carlos Zarate said Thursday.

Zarate made the remark in opposition to what he described as the "resurrection" by the Department of Health (DOH) of the proposed "Asin Tax."

"Is it because it is now Halloween that the DOH is spooking us by making a zombie of the now dead and anti-poor Asin Tax?" Zarate said in a statement.

He said a similar proposal was made during the 17th Congress, but it was eventually withdrawn as it would only increase the prices of products mostly consumed by poor Filipinos such as dried fish, sardines and noodles.

"Sa Asin tax, maski end product ang bubuwisan ng P1/mg ng sodium o asin sa produkto, dahil per milligram ang kwentada nila ay napakabigat nito sa mahihirap," Zarate explained.

"Maski ipataw lang ito sa ibabaw ng sodium daily dietary allowance na 500 mg per day for adults ay papatak na ilandaang piso na ang daing, tuyo, sardinas o noodles at iba pa," he added.

Because of this, Zarate said lower income groups will no longer be able to afford the food they commonly consume, whose prices have already increased since the implementation of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Law.

"It is not the sin of the poor that they can only afford a poor people's diet. It is their concrete present abject condition in our country that prevent them from getting healthy food," he said.

"Our warning then: Thou shall not tax salt because it is asin," he added.

House Committee on Ways and Means chair Joey Salceda has also expressed his reservations on DOH's proposal, saying that imposing tax on salt will be "inflationary" and "highly regressive." —LDF, GMA News