PCSO to digitize lotto games

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office will embark on a move to digitize the lotto games to further boost revenues and increase the PCSO’s funding for charity works.

Mel Robles, PCSO general manager, said digitizing the lotto would make the games easier and more accessible to bettors.

The PCSO aims to increase bet collections from various lottery games such as the Regular Lotto 6/42, Super Lotto 6/49, Mega Lotto 6/45, Grand Lotto 6/55 and Ultra Lotto 6/58.

“It will be app-based,” Robles told reporters last week.

He said increasing revenue collections from the lotto games as well as the Small Town Lottery and other digit games would be a big help to the PCSO, which claims to be facing difficulty in continuing its charity programs due to taxes imposed on the agency.

Robles lamented that the taxes had been a setback for the PCSO in helping more indigent people seeking cash assistance for their medical needs.

“We used to have P9 billion in charity funds, but because of the taxes being levied on the PCSO, we just have P900 million,” Robles said in a mix of Filipino and English. “It’s just one-tenth of our previous funding.”

Aside from its mandate to fund the government’s Universal Healthcare Law, the PCSO has been paying withholding tax, documentary stamp tax (DST), Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion tax and Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises or law tax.

Robles said the DST tax payments reached up to P5 billion and another P1 billion was imposed for the Malasakit Center law implementation.

He said because of the taxes that the PCSO is remitting to the national government, the charity agency now has a P30,000 limit to give away for assistance to the poor.

“While the PCSO is a government-owned and controlled corporation, it is directly in charge of charity. You do not tax charity. The concept of taxation is to raise funds for services to the public and we do this directly, serving the public when we do our charity projects. Then you should no longer tax it,” he pointed out.

Robles said there were instances when the ayuda or cash aid given to indigents was subjected to tax, but the PCSO opposed the move.