On Proposed Professional Tax: Mepz tells Lapu council to exempt wage earners

The Mactan Export Processing Zone Chamber of Exporters and Manufacturers and the Mactan Export Processing Zone-Human Resource Association have submitted their joint resolution to the Lapu-Lapu City council seeking exclusion of daily wage earners from paying the occupational fee and at the same time requesting that companies be relieved from the responsibility of collecting such fees.

The council is proposing to impose an annual professional tax of P300 and an occupational or calling fee of P100 on every person engaged in the exercise or practice of his profession.

MEPZCEM president Robert Oliver and Renato Bontol, president of MEPZ-HRA is appealing to the members of the city council to reconsider the imposition of occupational fee on daily wage earners who are mostly factory workers, handlers, technicians, packers, and janitors.

MEPZCEM is an association of locators in Mactan Economic Zones 1 and 2 and the Cebu Light Industrial Park in Lapu-Lapu City and special economic zones of Danao and Naga cities and the municipality of Balamban and the IT Park at the Cebu Business Park in Cebu City.

MEPZ-HRA is the association of the HR practitioners in these areas.

The locators represented by these two organizations employ at least 20,000 professionals and 60,000 daily wage earners, who of these employees pay their community tax to the Lapulapu City government by virtue of the city providing collection agents at the work sites.

The joint resolution also states that most of factory workers and daily wage earners, who comprise 75 percent of the workforce, receive only minimum wages.

However, MEPZCEM and MEPZ-HRA stated that they are not opposed to imposing the professional tax on employees who are occupying positions which require a PRC license as a minimum requirement or the occupational fee on employees who are not categorized as daily wage earners.

Under the proposed ordinance, it also mandates that locators do the collection of the fees and remit such to the Office of the City Treasurer in Lapu-Lapu City.

MEPZCEM and MEPZ-HRA however stressed that the task of acting as collection agents adds complexity to the companies' accounting and payroll processing and are prone to errors.

The associations have suggested that instead of the company as collection agent, the City Treasurer should instead do the collecting at the workplace when it collects payment for community tax, which is done every first quarter of the year. - Mitchelle P. Calipayan