President Benigno Aquino III has signed into law the bill that exempts people with disability from paying the 12-percent value added tax on certain goods and services, Malacañang said on Tuesday.
Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. confirmed that Aquino signed the law after two-and-a half months since it was ratified by Congress.
The PWD bill was authored in the House of Representatives by senatorial candidate Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez .
House Secretary-General Marilyn Barua-Yap said the House Records Management Service has sent to the Palace House Bill 1039 which Romualdez describes as an equalizing measure that would accord PWDs exactly the same privilege as that being enjoyed by senior citizens.
Romualdez, a lawyer and president of the Philippine Constitution Association, said: “The proposed law grants 12-percent VAT exemption to PWDs on certain goods and services. My bill will put PWDs on equal footing with senior citizens who are already exempted from VAT payment on top of their 20-percent discount.”
Romualdez, former chairman of the House committee on ethics and privileges, was joined by Marikina City Rep. Miro Quimbo, who chairs the House committee on ways and means, in pushing for the proposal while the Senate authors include Juan Edgardo Angara who is the chairman of the Senate committee on ways and means that deliberated the measure, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto who is a reelectionist, Senators Bam Aquino and Nancy Binay.
When the bill remained unacted in the House, officers of PWD groups such as Manuel Agcaoili, president/chief operating officer of Tahanang Walang Hagdanan Inc., and Emer Rojas, Cancer Alleviation Network on Care Education and Rehabilitation party-list nominee, said House leaders had no good reason to hold Romualdez’s HB No. 1039 .
Agcaoili maintained that there are almost 10 million PWDs in the country or 10 percent of the country’s 100-million population based on the estimates by the World Health Organization.
The Philippine Statistics Authority only pegged the number of PWDs in the country at almost 1.5 million.
The PWD law would also allow the relatives, up to the fourth civil degree of consanguinity or affinity, taking care of handicapped , to claim a tax deduction of P25,000 in their annual income tax.
“Persons with disability effectively enjoy only P12 for every P100 worth of good or service because the law does not exempt them from VAT, which is imposed on the net value of the good or service or 10 percent of the P80 after deducting P20, representing the 20-percent discount granted in RA 9442, for every P100 worth of good or service purchased,” said Romualdez, head of the House Independent Bloc and a three-term congressman who is running for the Senate under a platform anchored on compassionate governance.
Romualdez said the VAT exemption shall apply to the following: medical and dental services; purchase of medicines in all drugstores; public railways, skyways and bus fare; admission fees charged by theaters, cinema houses, concert halls, circuses, carnivals and other places of culture, leisure and amusement; and all services in hotels and similar lodging establishments, restaurants, and recreation centers.