Davao City To Lose P194M In IRA With HB 24 Approval

Davao City is set to lose P194 million in its Internal Revenue Allotment with the approval of House Bill 24.

HB 24, which was authored by Representative Ann Hofer of Zamboanga Sibugay, will result to the creation of 28 capital, towns into new cities even if they do not meet the P100 million locally generated income every year as provided under the Local Government Code.

Davao City had an IRA of P1.792 billion in 2007. This would have been increased to P2.055 billion in 2008.

"With the creation of new cities, the increase in the city's IRA would only amount to P69 million," councilor Peter Lavina said Tuesday.

He said this amount would have been enough to build the Sports Complex or the City College.

Taxing Text Messages For White Elephant Projects Like The Artica Sports Dome?

People from foreign countries use their mobile phones to call each other even for non important reasons. Filipinos however text each other endlessly, making the country the world's texting capital with over 1.39 billion sent by only 50 million SMS subscribers. This makes the proposed text messaging tax unpalatable even to Davao City councilors.

Councilor Rachel Zozobrado is against the proposal saying it is an unreasonable and additional burden to the Filipinos. The same sentiment was raised by councilor Pilar Braga. Councilor Peter Laviña is however against the proposal not only because of the government's promise not to impose new taxes but because the government should tax the rich people and big corporation.

With the proposed P0.50 tax per text message, the government is expected to raise P36 billion in specific excise taxes plus P41 billion in VAT collections---all to be used for projects including the Artica Sports Dome in Langub (worth billions but never benefited the Dabawenyos) which according to Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is a "monument of corruption."

Considering this, a person who normally sends out 10 messages a day will pay an additional P5 tax-wise. How many text messages do you send per day? You might just be a future investors in another one of the government's white elephant projects when that tax proposal is approved.