MANILA — Senate President Vicente Sotto III said Tuesday the Senate will support the recently passed version of the second package of the Duterte administration’s Comprehensive Tax Reform Program by the House of Representatives if the measure proves to be beneficial.
In an interview, Sotto said they will review House Bill No. 8083 or the Tax Reform for Attracting Better and High-Quality Opportunities or TRABAHO Bill once it is transmitted to the Senate.
The House passed the bill on third and final reading Monday with a vote of 174-14 with three abstentions.
The TRABAHO bill seeks to encourage investments by bringing down the corporate income tax rate from 30 percent to 20 percent and rationalize investment tax incentives to enhance fairness, improve competitiveness, plug tax leakages and attain fiscal sustainability.
It also aims to ensure that the grant of fiscal incentives helps bring in the greatest benefits, such as higher and more dispersed investments, more jobs, and better technology.
“I will ask Senator (Sonny) Angara to look at it. If it is going to be beneficial, if it will not redound to additional problems on taxes or might contribute again to inflation, we will definitely support it,” Sotto said.
Angara is the chair of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means.
Sotto added that part of the review would be to compare the House version with a counterpart bill that he filed in the Senate.
In his own version, which he filed in August, the emphasis was on reducing corporate income tax from 30 to 25 percent.
He said he did not include economic zones in his version on the proposal to rationalize tax incentives since these are self-generating and investment-driven.
Under the TRABAHO bill, firms operating in economic zones will have to deal with less tax incentives.
Sotto added that House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had talked to him and asked him to study the House version of the measure since, she said it is the good version and has a better chance that it will also pass in the Senate.
Sotto, however, said Senate hearings on the bill will have no deadlines.
“I cannot commit to it yet, because we have not read it. But if they have passed it already, then they will transmit it. Then once it’s transmitted I am sure it would be referred to the committee on ways and means,” Sotto said. (Jose Cielito Reganit/PNA)
