“It is clear that the Marcos family owes the nation billions of pesos.”
Regardless of the arguments of the lawyer-cum-spokesman of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., it is clear that the family owes the government billions of pesos in estate taxes.
The most basic amount is P23 billion as of 1997, which has ballooned to P203 billion due to surcharges and penalties.
Senator Imee Marcos, the eldest of the Marcos children, came forward recently to say that her family is willing to pay the unpaid tax, but she want a fair reckoning of the total properties or wealth that’s subject to estate tax.
The P203 billion, if collected in its entirety, will go a long way in addressing some key funding challenges that the government currently faces, and even the new administration that emerges from the May polls.
According to academics, economists, analysts, and health advocates, the amount can help fund long-term and short-term programs in health, infrastructure, and social services.
Easily, the P203 billion could partly plug the current funding requirement of the Universal Health Care (UHC) of PhilHealth.
The average annual cost of UHC’s implementation in the next five years will reach P288 billion per year, which means that the P203 billion is enough to cover 70 percent of the UHC’s yearly requirement.
Once under the sole disposal of UHC, the amount could be used to deliver healthcare services especially to patients from poor families, such as treating 877,600 COVID victims or assisting 5.8 million patients
afflicted with TB, or spending it to care for 2.03 million people with cancer, or attending to the needs of 8.12 million people with HIV.
If the government will use the money to upgrade the country’s health infrastructure, it could be spent for state-of-the-art hospital equipment since P203 billion could buy us 24,500 CT scanner machines; 12,000 MRI machines; 52,000 General X-Ray facilities; and, 157,000 ICU beds.
The unpaid estate tax could also be an effective tool to address the perennial shortage in housing, hospitals, and school buildings and make them more accessible to poorer communities. For example, the P203 billion could build 406,000 houses for poor families, or 88 hospitals 10-storey high, or construct 2,500 new school buildings.
If the government would decide instead to pour all of it into social services, that staggering amount could provide P9,900 cash assistance to 20.5 million poor families, or send to school 422,000 poor but deserving students.
To make its presence felt in the countryside, the next government could spend the entire amount to deploy more doctors and teachers to far-flung villages. The P203 billion could finance the hiring of 398 doctors to the barrio with a monthly salary of P56,000 or new teachers with a monthly pay of P30,000 who will serve for three years.
Clearly, the amount, albeit contestable, is not a figment of imagination, fake news, or a product of black propaganda targeting the survey frontrunner.
There’s, however, a national sense of urgency in collecting this tax either in whole or in part. Because, as former Justice Antonio Carpio has warned, we could kiss it goodbye if Marcos Jr. wins the presidential race.
The unpaid Marcos estate tax nevertheless provides a golden opportunity for us to replenish our almost-empty national coffers.
And the fact that the Marcos family owes this is as tangible and as hard as the real gold bars—very much unlike the mythical Tallano loot.
AI wants next polls to be a ‘game-changer’ for human rights
The international human rights group Amnesty International has urged all presidential candidates in the May 9 elections to ensure that the protection of human rights is a core part of their plans.
“The forthcoming elections are set to be some of the most important in recent history, and we hope they will help pave the way for a radically different approach to human rights,” said Erwin van der Borght, Interim Regional Director for Amnesty International.
“Over the past six years, thousands of people, overwhelmingly poor, have been killed by the police and other armed individuals as part of the government’s so-called ‘war on drugs’…The next government must restore respect for human rights, including the right to life and due process, by urgently abandoning this murderous policy and instead adopting an approach to drugs that puts health and human rights at the center.”
“In addition to ending these appalling attacks, the new government must tackle years of impunity, hold perpetrators of serious violations to account in fair trials and ensure long-awaited justice and reparations for thousands of victims. Human rights violations must not be swept under the rug for political expediency.”
The group also urges candidates to address the acute health inequities in the country that have been ongoing for decades, exposed and worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. It makes recommendations in other areas, including the rights of marginalized groups, freedom of expression, right to education, climate justice, and labor rights.
“The next six years in the Philippines should be a new era where leaders respect and protect the human rights of all, not just the powerful few,” the group pointed out.
We agree completely. (Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)