EDITORIAL - What a shame

Doctors are up in arms over a BIR shame campaign accusing them and other professionals of not paying their correct taxes. The Philippine Medical Association vehemently denied the accusation, saying its members are not tax cheats.

The PMA can be forgiven for reacting to newspaper advertisements showing teachers, who seem to pay higher taxes than doctors, carrying the heavier part of the tax burden than their better earning counterparts in the other professions.

As an association, it is to be assumed that not everyone in its membership is guilty of the accusation. It has to be presumed that there are many doctors out there who pay the correct taxes both as a matter of civic duty and as a matter of conscience.

But it is one thing to vehemently deny the accusation and another to prove it. And apparently, the BIR has some solid evidence in its hands to back the accusation, otherwise it would not have gone public with such a serious and sensitive allegation.

For example, the BIR has documents showing stark differences between the taxes paid by teachers in one place, and taxes paid by doctors in the same place. In other words, in certain given areas, teachers who earn so much less than doctors (comparative incomes are also shown) pay even double the taxes paid by the latter.

Now this is something doctors cannot just answer with a flat denial or invocations of unfairness. The only way to disprove the accusation is to wave income tax documents showing payments that are at least higher than those of teachers, who are among the lowest paid professionals in the country today.

And this goes too with other professionals, such as lawyers. For it is painfully insulting to the intelligence to find out, from documents also made public by the BIR, that there are lawyers who actually pay no more than P5,000 a year in income taxes.

That is something even the village idiot would not believe. Cheating on taxes is far worse than the PDAF scandal because at least the public esteem of politicians does not divorce them dramatically from their sins. But doctors and lawyers? These are people we normally hold in very high regard.

During homecomings and reunions, it is always the doctors and the lawyers of the class who are given the highest recognitions and seated in the best parts of the stage and dinner table. Teachers are relegated to being usherettes and food servers. What a shame indeed.