House panel tackles bill seeking travel discounts for PWDs, seniors

MANILA, August 10 ------ The House Committee on Tourism began the deliberations on the bills seeking to exempt senior citizens and persons with disabilities from paying travel tax, and those that seek to give these sectors a 20 percent travel tax discount.

The Department of Transportation and the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority expressed support for the intent of the bills. TIEZA’s Atty. Bumbo Cruz, however, told the panel that exempting the elderly from paying travel tax will cut collection by around P486 million annually, while giving them 20 percent discount will reduce annual collection by around P97 million.

This is based on estimates that around 300,000 senior citizens travel abroad yearly. “For TIEZA, we also fully support the intention of the bills to give incentives to senior citizens and PWDs. However, so the committee will consider all the effects of the proposed measures, we will just state that based on our estimates, this will impact travel tax collection by around 4.5% annually, based on the data we gathered for senior citizens po. For PWDs, unfortunately, we could not get data on how many PWDs travel outbound in the Philippines,” Cruz told the panel.

Half of the travel tax collection goes to TIEZA for the establishment and development of tourism infrastructure projects in the country. Forty percent goes to the Commission on Higher Education to support tourism related educational programs and course, and ten percent goes to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts for initiatives that seek to preserve, conserve and protect the country’s historical and cultural heritage.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairperson and Albay 2nd District Representative Joey Salceda offered a way to prevent a reduction in travel tax collection should the bills be passed into law. “We can charge it to tax expenditure fund. So you will lose nothing. We can through the Committee on Ways and Means make sure that you will not lose anything while the senior citizens will gain. You have my word,” he said.

The panel will schedule another meeting to continue tackling the proposed measures.

Source: news.abs-cbn.com