Senator Francis Tolentino Sunday said he will file today a Senate measure which recommends that employers give a monthly P1000 electricity allowance to their employees who are on work-from-home status due to the pandemic.
In an interview over DZBB, Tolentino said companies should be able to give this (incentive) to their employees who are working from home.
“Hindi lang naman P1,000 siguro ang bayad. And that would also be deductible from their business expenses. Yun, mababawas doon sa buwis na babayaran naman ng kompanya,” Tolentino said.
Under his proposal, Tolentino said employees who are working from home should be entitled to a P1,000 tax deduction for every month that they are working from home. He said this can be a deductible expense in the taxable income of these workers.
Aside from the P1,000 tax deduction per month, he also cited another formula that could be considered in providing this tax incentive.
Tolentino said that he devised a formula which he patterned from Australia- to make this (the deduction from tax) P25 per hour
He said Australia is now implementing a AU$50 per hour for those working from home.
“I computed the AU$50, it’s almost equivalent to P17 in our money,” he said.
“So if P17, it’s P136 for eight hours of work from home. But perhaps, you’re not working eight hours from home, it might be only four hours,” also said Tolentino.
Tolentino said the employee must only declare under oath that he or she only worked for this number of hours to determine how much will be deducted from his or her income tax.
The senator said there should be penalties on the part of the employees if they fail to give incentives to their work-from-home employees.
“Dapat meron ‘yun. Kasi ang laki nu’ng nagiging katipiran niya,” he said.
He said this would help lessen their burden in paying their electric bills since they started performing their jobs out of the office.