CAMARINES Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte yesterday urged senators to adopt the House-approved bill raising the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) share of local government units (LGUs) from the current 40 percent to 50 percent by end of the year, saying the measure would strengthen local fiscal autonomy through decentralization, which the administration has failed to achieve when it gave up the push for federalism.
“We call on the Senate to swift pass the measure from their end as a fitting Christmas gift to local executives,” said Villafuerte after the House of Representatives passed on third and final reading House Bill No. 10296, the consolidated bill that seeks to increase to 50 percent from 40 percent the local government share in national taxes.
If not before year-end, Villafuerte said, senators may approve the measure during the remaining months of the Duterte administration to allow LGUs to bankroll more development projects and rev up the delivery of frontline services.
Villafuerte, one of the bill’s authors, said the measure will help LGUs become “more responsive and accountable” and will finally free them from the clutches of “Imperial Manila.”
He said raising the IRA, now called the National Tax Allotment (NTA), will complement the Supreme Court move to boost LGUs’ fiscal autonomy when it ruled in 2018 in the Mandanas-Garcia case that the IRA should be computed on the basis of all national revenue collections and not just on the internal revenue take of the BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue).”
The national government is expected to implement the Mandanas ruling in the allocation of the NTA beginning next year.
Aside from increasing the share of LGUs in the proceeds from national taxes, the bill also ensures that this would not be reduced substantially even with a ballooning public deficit and lower gross domestic product (GDP) growth through a provision stating that the NTA cannot be reduced to less than 30 percent of the collection of taxes on the third fiscal year preceding the current fiscal year.
