PHILIPPINE Charity Sweepstakes Office General Manager Alexander Balutan will study a suggestion that barangays should also have a share of revenues collected from the Small Town Lottery.
The Implementing Rules and Regulations provide that cities/municipalities receive monthly 3 percent shares from the STL net sales; provincial, 0.75 percent; district, 0.25 percent; and Philippine National Police, 2.5 percent.
All these shares are culled from the 30 percent charity fund.
In the first quarter, PCSO has shared a total P446.6 million with local government units, districts, and the police, it said in a statement.
Also in the forum, Balutan made public the agency’s first quarter earnings of P15.98 billion.
The amount represents the combined revenue from all PCSO products namely Lotto, Keno, Sweepstakes, and STL where the revenue generated a 28.24-percent increase from the same quarter last year, amounting to P12.45 billion.
“I want to be transparent to the Filipino people. That’s why we publish this [our accomplishment] in newspapers… Remember, PCSO is not receiving anything, any single centavo from the taxes of the people. We get our revenues from the gaming public,” he said.
Of almost P16-billion revenue of PCSO, the highest revenue increase was recorded by the STL with P6.1 billion, an increase of 114.09 percent compared to the revenue of the same quarter last year.
STL revenue for the first quarter is also equivalent to 38 percent of the entire revenue of the agency. Other products of PCSO like Keno and Instant Sweepstakes also contributed P1.4 billion (9 percent) and P663 million (4 percent), respectively.
While Lotto and other digit games earned P7.7 billion this quarter, it posted -6.54 percent decrease from the same period last year.
Lotto and other digit games are also jackpot-prize driven where “the higher the jackpot prize, the higher the sales.”
TRAIN (or Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion) law imposes 20-percent tax on winnings of more than P10,000 from Lotto, Keno, STL, Sweepstakes, and other PCSO products.
At present, the agency is paying P3.59-billion taxes to the government.
If one wins P100 million, P20 million will automatically be deducted from it. From P500-million tax, the agency is now paying an average of P1 billion a month tax, PCSO said in its statement.
Since day one of his appointment with former chairman [Jorge] Corpuz in 2016, Balutan said they tried to build the image of PCSO that has a negative reputation in the public.