IMF head meddling—Escudero

Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The suggestion by a visiting International Monetary Fund (IMF) official that text messages be taxed next is “skewed and unfeeling,” and is actually “foreign meddling,” said Sen. Francis Escudero, who vowed to block any bill on the matter.

“It is not for any institutions or any foreign entities… to dictate upon us what to… tax, ” Escudero said.  “The power to tax is inherent in Congress and any external intervention is meddling with our sovereignty” the senator said in a statement.

Escudero described as “skewed and unfeeling” the suggestion made by visiting  IMF chief Christine Lagarde that the government should target text messages as the next source of higher taxes after it shall have approved an increase in tobacco and alcohol taxes.

In a press conference in Malacañang last week, Lagarde said text messaging was  a candidate for “good taxation”  because of its broad base of 102 million subscriptions out of the country’s total population of 94 million.

“I strongly oppose this foreign meddling and even the idea behind it. Ms Lagarde is better off  making suggestions to her fellow Europeans who can perhaps learn a thing or two from us,” said Escudero.

Both Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. and Isabela Rep. Giorgidi Aggabo, vice chairperson of the

House ways and means committee, agreed that text messaging should be next in line for higher taxation, although Belmonte added that the proposed tax was likely to be taken up in the next Congress.

Escudero said he would block the bill, adding that the IMF had failed to consider that more than 96 percent of the country’s subscriptions were prepaid lines, indicating that “text messaging is so ingrained among the lower socioeconomic strata.”

He added: “This twisted idea… is an additional burden to the masses… Why not set our sights on taxing luxury goods such as motor vehicles and jewelry instead?”