Students Sign Up vs Text Tax : QC IMC

Pressure from various sectors continues to mount on Malacanang and Congress following earlier proposals made by President Arroyo and her finance and budget secretaries to include tax on text messaging among the administration’s revenue measures.

TXTPower, a loose formation of cellular phone subscribers of all ages and classes, together with Anak ng Bayan Youth Party, trooped the University Belt today to gather signatures from college students against the tax on text messages. The group started its signature drive this week to gather more than one million signatures to formally register its petition in Congress against the proposed tax measure. This petition is currently being circulated in schools, workplaces, marketplaces and malls nationwide.

Raymond Palatino, Anak ng Bayan vice president said, “Text messaging or texting in this country has become an integral part of life and a medium of communication for many Filipinos. It cuts across all sectors and classes – from the youth, to professionals, parents, businessmen and entrepreneurs and our Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW). To impose taxes on text messaging is therefore anti-people.”

“With prices of basic commodities and services already gone up, this proposal is another clear burden for Filipino consumers, especially the youth. Despite earlier moves to suspend this plan, government agencies such as the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) are still “studying” the possibility of implementing such plan to augment the growing budget deficit,” Palatino added.

The Arroyo government is currently facing a fiscal deficit of P312 billion and a public sector debt amounting to P5.3 trillion. This is by far the highest budget deficit in history.

Early this week, President Arroyo in a forum with businessmen said that the government will tax the “windfall profit” of telecom firms and not cellular phone subscribers. Palatino assailed Arroyo’s statement, saying tax on telecom firms will eventually be passed on to consumers. “The government should clean its own backyard first. No one should be blamed for the endemic economic crisis and huge budget deficit gripping our nation except the government, for it has continued to implement wrong policies and coddled corrupt officials,” he pointed out.

The group will hold a media event titled “P1 Billion Fun Run” at the President Diosdado Macapagal avenue on Sunday, August 1, at 7 o’clock in the morning as a symbolic act of protest against text tax and government corruption. The said avenue, which has cost the government over one billion pesos to build, is considered as the most expensive and controversial road in the world.

The Philippines is considered as the texting capital of the world, with cellphone users spawning to almost 25 percent of its population. On the average, 27 million Filipinos send five text messages a day or 175 million text messages daily.