Dino: Don’t tax coops

CEBU, Philippines - Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino said yesterday he will bring to the attention of President Rodrigo Duterte his opposition to the move to tax cooperatives in the country.

At present, cooperatives are exempt from taxes but a bill is now pending in Congress to scrap this privilege.

“Definitely, sigurado, ako 100 percent supak sad ko niana because having a cooperative, aside from earning money, nakatabang ni sa mga pobre,” Dino told members of the Cebu News Workers Multipurpose Cooperative during their 20th General Annual Assembly yesterday.

Dino is optimistic, though, that Duterte will veto the law should it reach his office.

“Sometimes, we have to understand the very basis why the coop was founded. It is really for the poor. If you tax the poor, di gahanan ang presidente ana. We all know that the president is pro-poor,” Dino said.

Dino said he will come up with a formal position paper and raise the matter in the Cabinet meeting.

In a message sent to The Freeman, Dino said he will also inform the president of “organizations circumventing the law on labor relations and taxations under the guise of cooperatives.”

“Legitimate cooperatives which actually uplift the lives of the poor who are cooperators should always be exempt of taxes. When the government taxes these cooperatives, it has a pass on effect to the poor borrowers. I don't want that,” he said.

“On the other side of the coin, we should also cleanse the cooperative industry those pseudo coops and illegitimate coops who are hiding under the cooperative development laws and regulations, just to escape taxes and the liabilities attaching the employer-employee relation,” he added.

He said the so-called shotgun type of tax exemptions will not help the country and organizations that abuse “cooperativism” by imposing taxes must be penalized.

In his speech at the assembly, Dino recognized cooperatives as partners of government in the fight against poverty, social inequality, and economic imbalance, a reason why cooperatives thrive even up to the farthest mountain and, in the case of the Newscoop, among competing media outlets.

He pointed out that Duterte sees the relevance of cooperatives as an avenue to enhance programs aimed at reducing poverty in the Philippines.

He cited the executive order Duterte issued on June 30, 2016, which placed 12 agencies under the Office of the President, including the Cooperative Development Authority.

Dino said that Duterte is aware that cooperatives are economic drivers of his administration’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda, as the Philippines has more than 26,000 cooperatives registered with the CDA, with combined membership of more than 13 million wherein reporting (active) coops have a total asset of P278 billion as of  2015.

In other words, Dino said, cooperatives serve as catalyst for social, economic, and cultural development, both locally and nationally.

Elias Baquero, chairman of the Newscoop, said the group’s leaders have met to discuss ways to oppose to pending bills.

Malou Guanzon-Apalisok, chairperson of the coop’s committee on gender and development, said they expect at least 10,000 members of cooperatives to join the nationwide simultaneous protest on April 29 against the bills.

Apalisok, one of the organizers of the rally here, said Region-7 has about 1,000 cooperatives, all of which pledged to join the event.

Various federations of cooperatives all over the country have been campaigning against provisions in the proposed law on the Rationalization of Fiscal Investment Incentives that seeks to repeal section 60 and 61, the provisions that give cooperatives tax exemption privileges, under Republic Act 9520 or the Cooperative Code of the Philippines. —/JMO (FREEMAN)