If the regular taxpayer feels the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s noose tightening around him, could the good news be that the BIR will also be tightening its noose around the corporate elite that has managed to convince the government and the public that all its practices are aboveboard, when actually the opposite is what is happening?
The small number of regular taxpayers is carrying the bigger burden of development. Those who should be contributing more to development are able to evade the responsibility, hiding this through “corporate social responsibility” which they undertake to suit their own purposes and to make the public feel beholden to them for the little they give. But their wealth is obscene when juxtaposed against the reality on the ground—a struggling economy and a people mired in poverty.
The saddest part is, government is soft on the elite. For instance, government is playing deaf, dumb and blind to the farce of contractual five-month employment; when the truth is people are effectively made to work continuously even for years, except that at the end of the “contracted” five months, they are given “new” five-month contracts, except that they are “allowed” a few rest days or “rotated” to another branch. This forces small business to follow suit, or they won’t survive the competition. So the vicious cycle widens. This is the main reason the great majority of our labor force remains poor.
Instead of targeting small taxpayers, why doesn’t government focus on correcting the farce that is being lived out every day by contractual workers in the corporate world.
—JACQUELINE CANCIO VEGA,
Jacqueline_cancio_vega@yahoo.com