THE House Committee on Ways and Means will hear various bills seeking to update the motor vehicle user’s charges (MVUC) when session resumes next month, including proposals to earmark revenues for the local manufacture of passenger utility jeepneys (PUJs), the chair of the tax panel said yesterday.
Albay Rep. Joey Salceda said his panel will start hearing the MVUC bills before it hears the proposed taxes on salty and sugary food when session resumes after President Marcos’s second State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 24.
Salceda said his proposal includes exempting motorcycles from paying the MVUC since it has now become a “means of living” for many Filipinos, noting that while only 5.9 percent of all Filipino households own any type of car, jeep, or van, half of Filipino households “own some sort of motorcycle.
“My proposal is to exempt motorcycles from MVUC. Especially since it’s a means of living now, with delivery express services and the like. Tricycles will also be exempt under my proposal,” said the panel chair, author of House Bill No. 376.
There are already four proposals seeking to update the MVUC pending before the panel and Salceda said lawmakers are also considering a set of other options, including placing MVUC in the Tax Code, “since the Road Board, which used to administer it, no longer exists anyway.”
He cited the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s (JICA) estimate that the cost of traffic in the Greater Manila Area at P1.227 trillion alone based on a 2017 study, which he said, has likely grown now.
Salceda said the government spends around P300 billion on road construction and repair every year while the MVUC is just around P18 billion annually.
“So, car owners are heavily subsidized for car use. That’s not to mention distorted loopholes, like the pick-up truck excise tax exemption,” he said. “The effect is, when something is artificially cheaper than it should be, more people do it than should be. So, we have more traffic than our roads can accommodate.”
Salceda claimed that the MVUC “is highly progressive, and his proposal will benefit more Filipinos.
“We are also thinking of earmarking some revenues for zero-interest loans for local jeepney manufacturers. The imported modern ones are too expensive. We need locally made cheaper ones so that the jobs created are created here,” he said.
Salceda said his panel will also discuss the proposed luxury goods tax, which Marcos supports, before they discuss proposals for junk food taxes.
“We will discuss taxes that hit the rich first. That’s our constitutional duty. I still have questions about the proposed tax increase on sweetened beverages and the proposal for salty food taxes. I also want to consider other options, including closing some of the tax exemptions to the sweetened beverage tax,” he said.
