Villar seeks tax incentives for parents of special children

MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. has filed a bill that would grant tax incentives to parents of children with special needs in order to help reduce the burden on their finances.

Senate Bill No. 2624 would provide the qualified taxpayer-parent a deduction of P50,000 on income tax.

The deduction would cover specific expenditures intended for the care of children with special needs such as tuition for a private school, therapy, diagnostic evaluations by a medical professional, tutoring, transportation expenses to school or a medical facility, and the purchase of specialized instructional materials.

“This bill seeks to ease the financial burden on families who have children with special needs. Parents and legal guardians will be allowed a tax deduction to help deal with the expensive therapy, education and treatment of the child,” Villar said.

The coverage would include children who are intellectually disabled, have hearing impairments, speech or language impairments, visual impairments, serious emotional disturbance, orthopedic impairment, autism and traumatic brain injury.

“In the face of rising cost of petroleum products, transportation services and basic commodities, this bill aims to help parents and legal guardians provide better support and special care for a child with special needs by reducing their expenses,” he said.

The bill would also cover children with specific learning disabilities manifested through imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. This includes conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.

Qualified children with special needs are legitimate, illegitimate or legally adopted children chiefly dependent on and living with the taxpayer.

This would also cover children with special needs who are placed under the legal custody of an immediate family member or relative.

In addition, the child should not be more than 13 years of age and must be assessed by the Department of Education’s Special Education Division and a medical professional in order to qualify.

The parent or legal guardian should also show proof that he or she is providing more than half of the total financial support for the child to qualify for the deduction.

Villar cited the report of the Department of Education’s Special Education Division stating that the cost of taking care of a child with a disability is at least double compared to regular children.

It was revealed that children with learning disability topped the list of special needs children enrolled in public elementary schools as of 2009.

A total of 51,296 children were assessed as learning disabled; mentally retarded/intellectually disabled children stood at 13,119, while children who are hearing impaired ranked third with 12,039.

For school year 2007-2008, the number of enrolled children with special needs in public and private elementary schools stood at 92,429.

This translates to a 27.6 percent increase compared to school year 2004-2005’s total of 79,118. Many of these children no longer pursue secondary education or stay in elementary schools for an extended period of time.