Albay 2nd District Representative Joey Salceda shared Saturday, July 23 the best way to tax wealthy Filipinos.

This, as the Economist-Solon laid bare in a statement that he favors the imposition of wealth taxes as a way to help the government raise funds for public services.

“I am strongly in favor of taxes on the rich. After all, the Constitution explicitly requires that our tax system be progressive, and therefore burden the wealthy more heavily,” said Salceda, who is set to retain the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee for a year. once the 19th Congress begins.

“The best way to tax the rich is either through their real estate (land) wealth or through their conspicuous consumption,” Bicolano said.

“For the first way, we need to find ways to properly assess and tax high-value land through the Property Assessment and Valuation Reform Act. At the same time, we must balance the impacts on small landowners. I will propose amendments to this bill that will relieve agricultural landowners while taxing high value land in due course,” he said.

The veteran solon also aims to incentivize the use of high value land, as they should be incentivized to generate income to meet its tax obligations.

“On the other hand, we need to extend the tax on non-essential goods under section 50 of the tax code and extend it to other obvious luxury items such as luxury watches, expensive bags and haute couture. We can also increase the rate by 20% to 25%,” Salceda said.

“The luxury goods market in the Philippines represents 71 billion pesos in revenue per year. This should bring in between 12 and 18 billion pesos per year. Removing the excise tax exemption on vans and the tax reduction on expensive hybrid cars is also something I am considering,” he explained.

“On income, it may be possible to adjust the top marginal tax rate to 40% for those earning more than 15 million pesos, but given the ease with which it is possible to make an offset under form of stock options and other non-monetary methods, I suspect will not yield very large revenues,” Salceda added.

On the contrary, he said he was skeptical of increasing taxes on fixed assets and financial wealth, “because it is in effect a tax on investments”.

“We need investments because they create jobs and provide the necessary financing for infrastructure and private services. Thus, wealth taxes with these assets as a basis could harm the economy,” he noted.