Joker: No way tax on text will pass

There is no way the incoming 13th Congress will approve the administration’s proposal to impose a tax on text messaging, Sen. Joker Arroyo said yesterday.

He said even if the House of Representatives, which is expected to be headed again by Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., will pass the tax, it would gather dust in the Senate.

At least three senators heading important committees are against it, he said. They are Ralph Recto, chairman of the ways and means committee, the panel that scrutinizes tax proposals; Manuel Villar Jr., who heads the finance committee, which examines the annual budget; and Majority Leader Francis Pangilinan, who is in charge of day-to-day business at the Senate.

"And now I join them as chairman of the public services committee," he said, referring to the panel that scrutinizes legislative franchises such as those granted to telecommunications companies.

The four senators belong to the so-called Wednesday Group in the Senate. Their fifth member is Sen. Noli de Castro, running mate of President Arroyo. The group is largely supportive of the administration.

Senator Arroyo, who is not related to the President, told the administration’s fiscal and economic managers to "abandon altogether their senseless plan to tax text messages... if they insist, they better pitch their tents on the grounds of the Senate."

Arroyo said the planned text tax would punish the poor more than the rich who can afford such an imposition.

"Yes, we have this stinking budget deficit brought about in no small degree by bungling fiscal and economic managers. But why punish the public, more particularly the lowest income class, for the ineptitude of these blue-suited technocrats in government. Yes, text messaging is being overused, but why should the tax powers of the government be used to curtail this?" he asked.

He said text messaging is the cheapest means of communications available to the poor who cannot afford telephone lines, even if there are telephone systems in their communities.

The advent of wireless technology brought cellular phones to the lowest levels of society and almost everywhere in the country, he noted.

"Now the government, grasping at straws to plug the budget deficit, has hatched a plan, which would hit the poorest the most," he said.

Arroyo pointed out that resistance to the text tax plan comes not from lawmakers but from the public.

"We have just come from a bitter electoral contest and both winners and losers know this. The government’s budget managers should not add to the problems of the elected president by insisting on a measure that will clearly cause a backlash of public opinion. This will only fuel the people’s disenchantment with the government," he stressed.

The planned text tax is part of a package of measures that is being proposed to narrow the budget deficit, which is projected to hit P200 billion this year, the same level as last year’s. Deficit spending level has been unprecedented in the country’s history in the past two years.

Aside from the tax on text messages, there is also a proposal to increase the levy on fuel products, which are already heavily taxed.

The administration is also planning to revive the proposed increase in the excise tax on "sin" products, such as liquor and cigarettes, by indexing their retail prices to inflation. The excise tax has been fixed many years ago and has not been adjusted since.

The administration’s failure to push for the enactment of the "sin" tax indexation proposal despite the fact that Congress is dominated by allies of Mrs. Arroyo, was one of the frustrations of former finance secretary Jose Isidro Camacho.