Kris Aquino paid close to P50 million in taxes to the government in 2011, making her the number one taxpayer in the country for that year, according to figures released by the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
Does that make Kris a more honest and diligent taxpayer than any of the Filipino tycoons listed by Forbes as among the richest people in the world but none of whom made it to the Top 10 Taxpayers List?
The answer, sorry to say, is not necessarily. All it means is that Kris paid P50 million in taxes. And if that is the correct figure, then God bless her. That others did not pay more is just circumstantial, you know, like it happens only in the Philippines.
Take the case of doctors and lawyers. Even a modest practice in these lofty and exalted professions should net a yearly income of at least a million. But according to the same BIR, the average amount of taxes doctors and lawyers pay in a year is a mere P5,000.
Why, a lowly teacher pays so much more. That, dear friends, is the context by which the foregoing should be seen and understood in this country -- Kris as the teacher, the tycoons as the doctors and lawyers.
This election season, the electorate has yet to see a single politico promising to make some sense of the country's taxing mechanism that allows those who earn more to escape with less taxes while letting those who earn less carry the greater tax burden.
The BIR has promised to file cases against tax evaders every week, and it very well may have done so. But that is just skimming the surface and only passes the problem on to another level of the bureaucracy. What is needed is a more sensible, transparent and equitable system.
Nobody really cares who the richest people are or who pays the biggest taxes. The world in which these people live is entirely different from that of the remaining 90 percent of the population. The vast majority don't aspire to be tycoons or be considered as top taxpayers.
Talk of level playing field, let the field be at its level best in taxation. If Kris can pay P50 million in taxes, she probably could afford to pay it. If tycoons far richer that she is pay far less, the BIR can include them in its weekly promise if it dares.
But if teachers pay more than doctors and lawyers, then something must terribly be wrong and the BIR must find out what else is being swept under the rug. Or it can stop pretending and just shut up.