There is a need for tax policy reforms to address the collection gap from high-income earners and shift the tax burden from low- and middle-income households to the affluent sector, according to the Department of Finance (DoF).
Citing raw data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), the DoF said in a statement Monday that 27.9 percent of taxes high-income earners should pay are uncollected as a result of a flawed system. Thus, even if the BIR and the Bureau of Customs (BOC) were to improve collection efficiency to 100 percent, tax revenues to fund public investment program would not be enough given the inherent systemic flaws of the current tax system, which the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program (CTRP) aims to correct, the department said.
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The Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration (EROPA) website was given a major overhaul last January 23. It has been one month ever since, and most of the pages have been updated for you to check out.
In the past month alone, average weekly views increased by 55 percent from January 2017 and an overwhelming 128 percent from December 2016. As if this is not adequate, it is estimated that within the year, up to 25,000 views would be recorded by this site from January 2017. Within the same time period, people from at least 95 nations around the world accessed the site (up from the last count of 60). Seven of the ten largest audience sources were Asia-Pacific nations. Social media is also being utilized by EROPA to complement the renovation of the main website. Monthly social media reach in February represented a 127 percent increase from January 2017, and an astronomical 1,365 percent increase from December 2016. It is projected that for this year, up to 75,000 people will be reached by EROPA's social media outlets. You can follow our Facebook and Twitter profiles, as well as subscribe to our Youtube channel, which are easily accessible in this site. When this project was began, these numbers are inconceivable, yet all prior estimates were exceeded. Nevertheless, it is with you that we have achieved this success. It is fervently hoped that all of you would remain working with us in the weeks and months leading to the annual conference. Let us keep the pace together. As always, we are working towards better service for you. Kindly take time to answer our website experience survey in the main page to show us your appreciation and work on areas wherein we can improve our online services. Reaching further! Moving faster! Join EROPA in building a community of students, experts, scholars, and practitioners. As inequality widens, the government is pushing for tax reforms to reduce the gap through coordination with other countries.
Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said on Thursday that one of the solutions to fight inequality was improving the government’s ability to maximize tax collection from taxpayers. The country’s tax-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio now stands at below 11 percent, the lowest among its regional peers, despite it being the largest economy in Southeast Asia. Experts from ASEAN member countries and their development partners in the region are meeting in Vientiane to discuss issues relating to the 52nd ASEAN Working Group on Intellectual Property Cooperation (AWGIPC) and intellectual property protection.
Topics centered on ASEAN economic integration with participants convinced that the AWGIPC would contribute to fruitful economic and technical developments including consensus around intellectual property protection in the region. They believe their discussions will lead to increasing interconnectivity amoung ASEAN members and dialogue partners in the sector. A high ranking official of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) on Thursday claimed that the department is still in the process of carrying out the decision of the Office of the Ombudsman to either dismiss or suspend close to 3,000 corrupt local government officials.
Arthur Condes, executive assistant to DILG Secretary Ismael Sueno, however, admitted that the 2,799 officials facing graft and corruption charges were committed during the previous administration. The Communications and Information Ministry has urged Facebook to open a proper local office to enable it to adequately tackle complaints about fake news and negative content that spreads through the social media platform.
Minister Rudiantara conveyed the request during a meeting with the Asia Pacific-based delegation led by Facebook’s head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, on Tuesday, saying that the existence of an official office in Indonesia would enable the firm to better respond to content complaints and improve communication with the government. Facebook, which has up to 96 million users in Indonesia, runs a small local representative office, while its regional office is located in Singapore. The Department of Finance (DoF) is calling for an overhaul of obsolete land governance policies to prevent Metro Manila’s “urban nightmare” from spreading all over the country.
“I will be the first to admit our policies regarding land governance are in urgent need for updating,” Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd said in his keynote speech at the Conference on Sustainable Governance organized by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) held in Manila on Wednesday. Unless the government acts swiftly to upgrade its land governance policies, other areas of the country will suffer the same fate as that of Metro Manila, where high land costs and the lack of provisions for road expansions inhibit the government’s response to the worsening problems related to urban congestion, the Cabinet official noted. The government has secured a loan of US$25 million (about 205 billion kip) from the World Bank to further strengthen road maintenance and improve road connectivity throughout the country.
The Ministry of Finance signed the loan agreement with the World Bank yesterday, with the two parties represented by Deputy Minister of Finance Thipphakone Chanthavongsa and World Bank Country Director for Southeast Asia, Ulrich Zachau. The Lao PDR Road Sector II Project is part of the country’s national programme to build climate resilient roads and infrastructure. While labor export is considered as a means to alleviate poverty, Vietnamese overseas workers returning home face employment uncertainties.
The Vietnamese government may have advocated "labour export" as the means to alleviate unemployment and boost domestic labour skills, but overseas workers returning home continue to stare down the barrel of employment uncertainties. Cuong Gian Commune, in Nghi Xuan District of the central province of Ha Tinh, was once considered an exemplary "model" of labour export. It transformed itself from a poor fishing village to a prosperous commune, thanks to the remittances from abroad. Budget aimed at winning over voters in wake of controversial currency policy, say analysts.
With state polls ongoing, India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has unveiled a Budget that boosts government spending to help the poor while cutting tax rates. The Budget unveiled yesterday represented an effort to win the support of voters by blunting the negative impact of the government's controversial move last year to get rid of black money by demonetising high-value currency, say analysts. |
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