Philippines goes down in global tax ranking

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines has slid down in global tax ranking as the nation remains in the list of countries where taxes are costly and difficult despite government reforms.

Yahoo!News reported that the Philippines placed 143rd out of 185 economies in the “Paying Taxes” report released by the Doing Business Initiative of the World Bank and the International Finance Corp., as well as financial service firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The country ranked 135th out of 183 economies in the previous list.

The country still has high tax cost and burden of compliance based on three indicators namely total tax rate, time needed to comply with major taxes and the number of tax payments.

The report said the Philippines falls behind global averages in two out of three of the indicators in the report.

Local companies pay a tax rate of 46.6 percent of their commercial profit, higher than the global average of 44.7 percent.

Taxpayers also have to process payments 47 times a year, more than the global average of 27.2 payments.

Figures also indicated a worsening in the Philippine tax system from last year’s report, which showed that firms only had to pay taxes equivalent to 46.5 percent of their profit, with 47 payments taking a total of 195 hours.