The youth party in Congress, Kabataan Partylist, has joined forces with consumer advocacy group TXTPower to spearhead an online and mobile campaign against the proposal to impose a five-centavo excise tax on SMS, MMS and mobile calls in the Philippines.

Kabataan Partylist is encouraging all those opposed to the "text tax" to join the Facebook Cause No Tax on Text! and email pro-text tax congressmen to convince them to scrap the bill.

Here's an excerpt from the statement from Kabataan Party-list Representative Raymond "Mong" Palatino.

"If the rationale behind the imposition of a five centavos text tax is to fund education, why not augment the education budget by getting a slice of the President’s pie?" asked Palatino who is also convenor of the consumer rights group TXTPower.

The young solon said the Office of the President's four billion pesos budget for 2010 can still be cut down by removing unnecessary items such as salaries for presidential advisers, overly expensive junkets and other pump-priming projects.

Meanwhile, mobile firms in the Philippines have joined forces in opposing the text tax.

Here's a video report on the online campaign against the SMS tax.


For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV

Here's a video of TXTPower convenor Dr Giovanni Tapang talking about the text tax.


For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV

Here's a video of Antique Rep. Exequiel Javier who heads the House committee on the ways and means panel that approved the consolidated text tax bill.


For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV

Ironically, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had been pushing for a higher "sin tax" on products such as alcohol and cigarettes, but Javier earlier said Congress prioritized the text tax because it is "more doable".

Here's an excerpt from the Philippine Star article.

The House of Representatives is bent on pushing for the imposition of taxes on text messages rather than on cigarettes and liquors.

Antique Rep. Exequiel Javier, chairman of the committee on ways and means, said proposals to impose a P0.05 centavos tax on text messages are more doable than the proposed tax rates on tobacco and alcohol, whose sales have dropped by as much as 30 percent.

How about you, how do you feel about the text tax?

 

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