Lawmakers seek funeral discount for poor

MANILA, Philippines - Two lawmakers are seeking a 50-percent discount in funeral services for poor families.

“In the Philippines, dying has become as costly as living. This is because most Filipinos already live lives of utter poverty and still die poor and indebted till the end,” Bayan Muna Representatives Teddy Casiño and Neri Colmenares said.

Funeral services generally are expensive, a stark and difficult reality confronting a large majority of impoverished Filipinos.

There are instances when a wake lasts for more than a week to gather enough funds through abuloy (donations) to cover burial expenses, the lawmakers said.

They said more Filipino families are becoming poor as shown by recent surveys.

They cited the 2006 family income and expenditure survey of the National Statistics Office, which showed that 80 percent of Filipino families were struggling to survive with P284.33 a day, with the poorest 10 percent having income of only P90 per day.

“With an average family size of five, these figures translate to 68.2 million Filipinos subsisting on P56.87 a day. This wage structure and economic data demonstrate that our people can neither sustain their daily needs, let alone shoulder the funeral expenses of their departed loved ones,” they said.

“It is the duty of the state to provide for the welfare and security of its citizens,’’ they added.

According to them, HB 4002 aims to provide immediate relief to the poor, especially during the loss of their loved ones.

Under the bill, families classified as poor by the Department of Social Welfare and Development would receive 50-percent discount in funeral expenses.

At the same time, Casiño urged the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to go slow in imposing tax-filing requirements on taxpayers, most of whom are lowly salaried workers.

“The BIR should instead run after big-income earners and tax evaders. Workers cannot cheat because the government collects taxes from them even before they receive their pay,” he said.

“As they say, there are only two certainties in life – death and taxes,” he said.

But the government should not make life harder for the people by collecting more taxes or imposing impossible requirements like filing a detailed financial disclosure statement aside from an income tax return, he stressed.