MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives has approved a measure providing income tax relief for medical frontliners in the nation’s battle against COVID-19.
In session last Tuesday evening, congressmen decided via voice vote to approve House Bill No. 8259, the proposed “Handog Sa Mga Bayaning Lumaban Kontra COVID-19 Act” that grants a 25-percent discount to the personal income taxes (PIT) of medical frontliners for taxable year 2020.
The measure filed last month by 40 congressmen, led by Deputy Speaker Mikee Romero, intends to provide tax relief to medical workers in appreciation of their heroic service to the nation during the pandemic.
HB 8259 authorizes the secretary of the Department of Finance to extend, for a period of not more than six months, the exemption from payment of income tax to qualified medical frontliners.
The bill defines medical frontliners as “persons who are engaged in health-related services and are employed in hospitals, clinics or other medical institutions, whether public or private, which treat patients affected with COVID-19.”
Further, it states that medical frontliners also include administrative employees, support personnel and staff of medical institutions, regardless of their employment status.
“This will serve as token of appreciation to medical practitioners who render public service to the underprivileged and needy patients,” said Romero, of 1-Pacman party-list.
Under the bill, the tax discount is limited to salary or compensation from the exercise of their profession or employment.
The discount shall not apply to their income received from other businesses, investments and other kinds of passive income not related to serving, treating, caring, aiding and assisting COVID-19 patients.
Congress eyes scrapping ‘cedula’
In another development, Filipinos may soon bid goodbye to the cedula or community tax certificate (CTC) as a requirement for transactions in all government processes.?
Albay Rep. Joey Salceda filed House Bill No. 8455, the proposed “Clean and Efficient Government Act,” which seeks to simplify inefficient government processes and abolish the cedula, which he called an “obsolete” and “redundant” requirement.
“The cedula has been found to be an inadequate form of identification and an ineffective tool for local government collection, and is hence redundant in most occasions,” he said. “It’s time we phase it out, as it adds nearly an entire day to most government transactions that require it.”
The House ways and means committee chairman pointed out that as a proof of identity and residency, the cedula will be made redundant once the National ID System is rolled out.
Apart from scrapping the cedula requirement, HB 8455 also proposes other measures to modernize government services, including “single-contact, single-day business registration system to allow businesses that pose no threat to the common good to immediately do business upon registration.”
The bill also introduces a single-patient, single-record system to reduce hospital administrative burden and reduce patient waiting time before treatment and mitigate fraud in PhilHealth claims.
It also provides a single-registration for mandatory social contributions such as SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG to reduce the need for redundant transactions to establish identity and registration with different agencies.
One more feature of the proposed measure is the “online TIN application and fully online services for small taxpayers and wage earners; electronic payment system for all required government payments and online taxpayer account for filing and payment of almost all non-large taxpayer taxes.”