This thing about taxes

It's March and it's my first blog for the month.

Great! It just tells you that I'm not only all over the place, but am so busy because I have to put all my tax payments in order. It so happened that my accountant has been egging me to finish all these 2316 and 2307 requirements. That's not including the 1601E and 1601C and 2550M that I pay. Mind you, I'm not a billionaire. I'm just an ordinary working person who has to contend with the difficult taxation laws in the Philippines.

Like hello, get real. The taxation scheme here is so complex that I don't think the accountants in this country, nor the Bureau of Internal Revenue know what they're actually doing. Dang!

The 1601E and 1601C are monthly taxes from my clinical practice and since I have two clinics, I have to have separate books because I pay to separate local governments. Now that would have been a no brainer had I been practicing in Metro Manila and in a provincial area separately. But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The bright boys in government and taxation in this country figured that since Metro Manila is divided into different cities, then I pay separately in different cities my tax dues.

While I really don't mind paying my taxes, I think it's a lot of hassle to be flying in and out of the office just to queue (foreverrrrrrrrr!!!) in an accredited bank to pay your taxes. If you have clinical practice in say, four cities - Makati, Muntinlupa, Manila and Mandaluyong - well, good luck! And not all the banks in the country accept payments for taxes. Most of them are government affiliated banks and some smaller private banks that don't have enough branches for you to access easily.

It's just so frustrating having to go through this monthly.

Well, April 15 is the official deadline for filing of taxes for 2009. And the fact that there is not work from April 6 and 9-12, 2009 (the Philippines has the loooooooooooooooooooooonngest Holy Week because people here love to flagellate themselves, in any means), leaves me with just 3 weeks left for accomplishing everything. But some of the companies are taking forever to accomplish these forms so that I can file my taxes already.

Then I read in the newspaper about Asia Brewery (the liquor manufacturing arm of Lucio Tan) sending its Chief Financial Officer to congress to debate against the implementation of additional taxes for liquor. Dang! You should have heard his arguments. I mean, honestly, it was moronic and self-serving. The guy has got to get shot in the mouth. He reasoned that the addition of "sin taxes" to beer and other liquor products of Asia Brewery would be a disservice and burden to the poorer Filipino people who will not be able to enjoy this if the taxes for liquor and tobacco were increased. Dang! Moron has a new meaning in the likes of the CFO of Lucio Tan for Asia Brewery.

What did you expect? The guy is evil. And these are the very people that make oodles and kaboodles of money. At the end of the day, they can very well afford a liver transplant or perhaps a new lung or chemotherapy or go to the US for medical treatment. Never mind poor Juan de la Cruz who will die of lung cancer or liver disease.

If our lawmakers get convinced on the reasoning of the asshole from Asia Brewery, then this country is in the deepest sh*t possible. Dang! He feels sorry for the poor who will not be able to taste alcohol nor inhale nicotine. That was an OMG (Oh My God) response. What's with the sh*thead's reasoning? He claims that if the price of alcohol and tobacco increase then there would be a shortfall in revenue and the lowly employees will be out of work. Consider how many Filipinos unduly suffer from alcoholic liver problems and tobacco-related diseases annually. Put the statistics of healthcare costs with costs for alcohol and tobacco side by side and even the World Health Organization will shove the data on healthcare costs for alcohol and tobacco-related illnesses, up the CFOs ass.

I have never in my life seen any foreign company argue in this line of thinking regarding increasing taxes for alcohol and tobacco-related products. This is a first and it takes a brain dead Filipino CFO from a chinese controlled company to think this way. Of course, if the dead brained lawmakers accede to this, good luck to the country.

I've babbled my piece and up to my 3rd cup of coffee in blogging this article. Suffice it to say, let the taxes fall where they should. Healthcare should not be a burden to every individual and providing doctors a tax break so that they can provide cheaper health care costs in this country should be the RULE rather than the exception. And for "sin taxes", ehem, they should be immensely taxed so that people can start avoiding this VICE, which is a burden to health and therefore detrimental to the productivity of and individual in particular and a society in general.

I rest my case. Someone please shoot the messenger from Asia Brewery!