No to Text Tax!

(The article below appeared in today’s Panorama Magazine and Tempo. For those who share my sentiments and have a Facebook account, please sign up and support our cause via the No to Text Tax! page. Thanks!)

The House committee on ways and means recently approved a measure imposing a five-centavo tax on every text message. The authors of this bill estimate that around P36 billion in new revenues will be raised with this single tax proposal. Telecommunications companies notably, SMART and Globe, are vigorously protesting this text tax which Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said the Senate would block.
I certainly hope so! Consider this: three thousand Filipinos leave the country daily to work or travel abroad, and nearly all of them have mobile phones. Even a Filipino domestic helper bound for Hong Kong or Singapore or even in faraway Saudi Arabia would make sure that she has a mobile phone to use, while taking advantage of the marketing promos of telco companies for overseas Filipino workers. If you multiply an estimated 9 million overseas Filipinos by at least four family members or friends who are their textmate partners for life, you can just imagine how many lonely souls find solace in sending and receiving an SMS. Finance and economic managers would see this data and imagine a billion-peso windfall. As an OFW advocate, I look at text messaging more of a survival tool, especially when one is deployed to a company located in an isolated desert, or onboard a ship navigating through the Gulf of Aden.
Why must government add to the burdens of our OFWs and all ordinary consumers with a tax that would be ripped off their pockets anyway? Even if the proponents agree to insert a no pass-on provision, meaning the tax cannot be passed on to consumers, it inevitably will, if not as a direct tax than as a diminution of add-on services.
Authors of the bill assert that proceeds from this new tax measure will be used to modernize and revitalize our educational system, bringing computer laboratories to every school. Yeah, right. Haven’t we heard that all before? Why not do that now, with the EVAT collections? If they couldn’t do that when the VAT was first imposed and subsequently raised, why should we believe them now?
Earmarking a certain amount for a public program never seems to work in this country. Exhibit A: the AFP Modernization Program. Government sold its vast property at Fort Bonifacio with people’s consent because they promised that the revenues will be used to provide our soldiers with more planes, helicopters, and other modern equipment. Never happened, and given our growing budget deficit, it probably never will.

This House proposal to tax each and every text message we send diminishes our right to free expression as it intrudes in our personal space, with the introduction of a metering service to keep track of the length and geographic location of every SMS. Imagine a scenario wherein the more enraged a consumer is, the higher is his or her consumption of text credits.
Text messages are not sent out in a vacuum, but out of a necessity to clarify, express, console, berate, and even adore, as the need arises. For government to benefit out of a flurry of text messages between a distressed OFW and her family is like a mercenary waiting for his or her next hit. This is simply downright wrong.
Some of you may ask, how can government obtain a bigger slice out of the multi-billion profits of the telecom industry? Perhaps by improving the economy and our investment climate, we would have an expanded middle class able to consume more and pay for it without hurting. Perhaps, the new administration come 2010 will be so inspiring that tax evaders would change their ways and tax collectors would perform their duties to the hilt.
In the end, the imposition of new taxes is a matter of trust between the government and the governed. We all want to help our country. But sometimes government must step aside so that we are better able to help ourselves. A tax on text? Not now, when every centavo counts; not ever, if funds collected lead to unfulfilled promises, over and over and over again.