Senate inclined to tweak Palace version of tax reform program

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian. PHOTO FROM SENATE’S FACEBOOK PAGE

A comprehensive tax reform package will be passed by the Senate, but definitely not the version introduced by the Duterte administration, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chair of the Senate committee on economic affairs, said on Thursday.

READ: LP lauds Angara, senators for standing firm vs Duterte admin’s tax program

“I think because it’s part of the policy of the administration… there is a general support for this bill but I don’t think it will pass in its original format,” Gatchalian said in an ambush interview after a tax hearing at the Senate.

“Definitely a lot of changes will be made to accommodate the negative effects of tax reform,” he said.

Many senators have expressed reluctance, including the chairman of the Senate’s ways and means committee Senator Sonny Angara, in passing the tax reform program in its original form as the increases would cause inflation and affect many industries.

READ: Angara willing to quit ways and means committee if Duterte asks him

Gatchalian also called on the economic managers of President Rodrigo Duterte to be open to the changes the senators are proposing.

Asked if the senators fear possible backlash from Malacañang if they wouldn’t yield to Duterte’s wish, he said: “I don’t think so.”

But he said, he is “very optimistic” that both the legislative and executive branch will find a solution on the matter.

“I think everyone wants better infrastructures, everyone wants a better life for our families, and we really need revenues for that but we have to balance also the revenue collecting as well as its impact to our families. We have to find a solution,” Gatchalian said.

The Senate will convene a committee of the whole to allow economic managers to explain the comprehensive tax reform package and address the concerns of the senators on the measure.

In a separate ambush interview, Angara said the senators intend to ask the economic managers about their priority projects and their timeline in implementing the projects.

This is for the Senate to know which projects need funding from the government’s funds, he said.  JPV