Congress has 2 days to approve sin tax bill

MANILA, Philippines — The Senate and the House of Representatives have only two days left to approve the sin tax bill, which President Duterte has certified as urgent.

Lawmakers will hold sessions tomorrow and Tuesday, supposedly the scheduled adjournment of their third and last regular session.

Adjournment was originally set for Wednesday, but the President declared it a holiday.

On May 21, Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo wrote Senate President Vicente Sotto III calling for the approval by senators of 11 priority administration bills passed by the House before Congress went on a three-month election campaign recess in February.

The measures enumerated in the letter included two separate tax bills: “An Act amending the excise tax on alcohol products” and “An Act increasing the excise tax rate on tobacco products.”

However, senators are reportedly considering only the proposal to increase the levy on cigarettes and other tobacco products. Their version is Senate Bill 2233.

With the President’s certification of its urgency, senators may approve the bill on second, then third and final reading tomorrow or Tuesday. Since there would be no more time to convene a bicameral conference to reconcile the two chambers’ divergent version of the measure, the House could just adopt the Senate version.

The larger chamber, where the bill originated, would then print a clean copy and send it to the President for signing into law.

In certifying Bill 2233 as urgent, the President said there is a “need to protect the right to health of the people and to maintain a broader fiscal space to support the effective implementation of the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act.”

Quezon Rep. Angelina Tan, who chairs the House committee on health and one of the authors of the UHC law, said Bill 2233 is better than the House version in terms of generating more funds for the expanded health care program.

However, she said she was not sure if the senators’ version would fill the P60-70-billion annual funding gap for the program.

“I have not seen yet the calculations of the Department of Health and PhilHealth,” she said.

Bill 2233 proposes to adjust the tax on cigarettes from P37.50 to P45 per pack, or by P7.50, starting next year. The House version calls for a P2.50 increase.

Another House member, Luis Raymund Villafuerte of Camarines Sur, said the Senate should pass the tobacco tax bill before Congress adjourns its session on Tuesday.

“A new law setting even higher tax rates on cigarettes and other tobacco products to discourage smoking and help fund UHC is one potent way to make sure that the benefits of the continued economic growth surge on the Duterte watch trickle down and benefit all Filipinos,” he said.

He said failure on the part of the outgoing 17th Congress to approve the bill “would be a massive opportunity lost as it would be back to square one for the measure when a new Congress opens in July.”

Other lawmakers said the alcohol industry would again get a reprieve from a higher levy with the obvious decision of the Senate to put the House-approved liquor tax bill on the backburner.

They noted that the controversial Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, which took effect in January last year, increased the tobacco tax while completely ignoring the alcohol sector.