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No Cha-cha hearings at House until year-end — Rep. Rufus Rodriguez


No House panel hearing to discuss the proposed amendments to the 1987 Constitution will be held this year to make way for deliberation and approval of COVID-19 measures and the proposed 2021 national budget, House Committee on Constitutional Amendments chair Rufus Rodriguez said Thursday.

"The Committee following the Speaker’s suggestion will meet in January or February next year. We have to concentrate on the measures against COVID-19 and the 2021 proposed budget," Rodriguez said in a message to GMA News Online.

Rodriguez earlier said the House constitutional amendments panel would convene around two weeks after President Rodrigo Duterte's fifth State of the Nation Address back in July to discuss the constitutional reforms proposed by the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP).

LMP national president and Narvacan, Ilocos Sur Mayor Luis Chavit Singson said they have come up with a resolution proposing to institutionalize the so-called Mandanas Ruling of the Supreme Court in the Constitution and to lift restrictions on foreign investment in industries that are presently limited to Filipinos.

He said the mayors believe that institutionalizing the Mandanas Ruling will ensure that regions will have a continuous fair share in the taxes collected by the national government.

Further, the LMP mayors also claimed that allowing foreign investors to own the majority of operations of local firms would be beneficial to their constituents as long as there was continuous protection of workers' rights and a ban on foreign ownership of land.

Believing the local government units need more funds in order to address the impact of the COVID-19 crisis in their constituency, Rodriguez has filed House Bill 7430 which seeks to reflect the Mandanas ruling on the internal revenue allotment (IRA) in the Local Government Code.

In the said ruling, the Supreme Court declared the phrase "internal revenue" in the code as "unconstitutional and ordered it deleted from the law along with other references to the same," Rodriguez noted.

“It basically ruled that all references to ‘internal revenue’ in connection with the computation of IRA are unconstitutional. The ruling therefore widened the base amounts for computing IRA,” he said.

Rodriguez also said that the Department of Finance had constrained the share of LGUs from national taxes to levies collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

"With the high court’s ruling and the eventual enactment of Bill 7430, LGUs throughout the country will have more money for development purposes,” he said.

Under the bill, national taxes to be used as base for computing IRA will include but not limited to:

  • National internal revenue taxes enumerated in Section 21 of the National Internal Revenue Code collected by the BIR and the Bureau of Customs;
  • Tariff and customs duties collected by the Bureau of Customs;
  • 50% of value added taxes in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Muslim Region in Mindanao and 30 percent of all other national taxes collected in such region;
  • 60% of all national taxes raised from the exploitation and development of the national wealth;
  • 85% of excise taxes from locally manufactured Virginia-type cigarettes and other tobacco products; and
  • 25% of the 25-franchise tax on horse races

Provinces will share 23% of the IRA, while cities will have another 23% share, towns with 34% share, and barangays with 20% share.  — RSJ, GMA News

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