Why not ask traders? Don't penalize producers

The big story in Bacolod was the announcement that President Arroyo will formally declare open the 29th Masskara Festival on Oct. 1. That definitely is big news, as announced by City Mayor Evelio Leonardia over the weekend.

That immediately draw from Eli Tajanlangit, festival director, the statement that the 2008 Masskara Festival will resolve around the theme – Bacolod City of the World. It will focus on “our food, art and culture, our investment-friendly environment and world class labor force.”

The President, Leonardia said, is expected to deliver a speech before she formally opens the festival.

For the matter, our interviews showed that most hotels of Bacolod had already been blocked off by visitors, including foreign guests and balikbayans. Carissa Maalat of the Bacolod Pavilion said most hotels and inns of Bacolod had already been booked by Masskara fans.

But even the excitement generated by the famed festival failed to dampen the ongoing controversy over the Advance Expanded Value Added Tax on sugar cooperatives which has drawn into the streets the cooperative members, mostly agrarian reform beneficiaries.

But BIR OIC regional director Rhodita Galanto stood pat on her stand – “no list of buyers, no issuance of authority to release refined sugar” or ARRS.

This immediately prompted Fr. Armand Onion, chair of the Ma-ao Multipurpose and now parish priest of Granada, Bacolod, to point out that the BIR apparently wanted to take the easy way out by collecting advanced VAT from sugar coops.

“What can we pay the BIR when we have not even sold yet our sugar? Besides, the purpose of scrutinizing our books of accounts simply means that the BIR wants to find out who our buyers are. Which cannot be done since we have not yet sold our sugar,” Fr. Onion pointed out.

BIR is after taxing sugar traders, but why not ask them to pay the E-VAT. Why penalize the sugar cooperative by collecting from them what they had not sold yet was the point raised by Onion.

The VAT, he pointed out, is a sales tax. So, how can you collect in advance what had not yet been sold?

Onion said the other six sugar cooperatives are set to join the protest action they had started last week against the BIR Region 12 Revenue office.

Galanto, however, said she is just implementing the policy of the BIR in effect since 2002.

She added that the reaction of sugar planters about taxing refined sugar sold to non-cooperative members is only natural as they are implementing something new for them.

She said the list of buyers will their basis for taxing sugar traders.

She even suggested that cooperatives sell 40 percent of their refined sugar to their members so that they will be tax exempt and the 60 percent to the traders and then submit the list of buyers to her office.

That was exactly the point of Onion. The coops have not yet sold their sugar but they are already levied advance taxes.

“So, what can the cooperative members pay for their fertilizers and pay their workers now? That’s putting the cart before the horse,” was how he described the position of the sugar cooperatives.

Fr. Onion found a major ally in a former regional official of the BIR who called for the immediate suspension of the 12 percent tax levy on refined sugar because it is devoid of any legality.

Former revenue Region 12 chief of Negros Zenaida Astorga emphatically told local journalists in an interview Friday at a fastfood restaurant that collection of the VAT in advance by the BIR was not in order.

Astorga, who used to head the Regional Office’s Task Force on Monitoring Sugar, said that sugar cooperatives must be free from government intervention and must not be forced to pay any kind of tax.

The Cooperative Development Authority specifically provides that cooperatives are not subject to tax and if further essentially interpreted, such defiance would be violative of the Philippine Constitution, Astorga stressed.

One can no longer squeeze blood from stone, Mrs. Astorga stressed, pointing out that the advance payment means that cooperatives must either borrow money from banks to pay these and including the millers and traders to boot.

She agreed with Onion that is a form of punishment or penalty by the sugar cooperatives are asked to pay for still unsold goods.

The contention by Galanto that some cooperatives are paying the 60 percent of the P102 while the other 40 percent goes to the cooperatives on voluntary basis, is also confusing because the tax imposed are therefore not voluntary especially with the issuance of the ARRS attached to the order.

This is one issue that won’t go down the drain because for ARRS, with the onset of the milling season, if they can’t sell their sugar, they’ll have nothing to spend for planting and for other production inputs.

In short, it is a social issue that won’t go away.

ADDENDUM. The burial yesterday of 22-year-old Tara Conlu of Silay City, a nursing graduate, only served to highlight the crime wave that had hit two cities of Negros Occidental. She was found stabbed to death with 23 stab wounds. Hundreds of Silaynons escorted her remains. Tara was found in a sugarcane field. That prompted PNP provincial chief Rosendo Franco to assign more than half of the 50 new police recruits of the province to Silay and Bago cities where heinous crimes took place recently. Silay City acting Mayor Mark Golez said the city had offered P100,000 bounty to whoever can testify to the Tara killing. But Chief Jerry Bartolome said three suspects are now detained at the Silay PNP jail. They were Renito Perpas Castillo, Reynaldo Delacura Mitra and Roger Villariza Belomina – all tricycle drivers. Police said bloodstains and strands of hair were recovered from the motorcycle driven by Mitra, an ex-Marine in Bago City. Police are still trying to untangle who killed 54-year-old Floreta Guardario, who was a victim of molestation two weeks ago. Police are also investigating the killing of Benedicto Uy and Glover Arac, the latter from Mindanao. The two were claimed to have been liquidated by vigilante members.