The sale of pick-up trucks account for about 20% of vehicle sales a year. The excise taxes that could have been collected from these would have been a whopping 1.2 billion pesos a year. If that amount were invested in employment generating ventures, it could have resulted in about 5,000 jobs. If one job can support a family of 4 that means 20,000 mouths could have been fed.
There are even multiplier effects. Or that the number of those who were benefitted could have reached up to 60,000 people. Such are the number of people who could have been fed were the excise taxes for pick-ups been collected for just one year.
The price of a pick-up truck is about a million pesos. In other words, those who are enjoying the tax exemption are millionaires.
The rationale behind is pick-up buyers are supposed to be using these for businesses that generate employment. This seems to be from TV programs showing Americans really using their pick-up trucks for loading cargoes like dirty oily drums in construction or mining sites, huge cartoon of factory products including machineries being delivered to malls or dealers or to door to door customers.
In the Philippines? Pang porma lang for the macho image. The heaviest to be loaded on their beds might turn out to be just shopping bags from the mall. And this is at the expense of the basic benefits the masses could have derived had the excise taxes for these been paid.
The legislation for this exemption is the typical law that our congressmen and senators pass to favor the rich. If they did not see this, then they did not have enough brains in the first place to represent the interest of the people.
Removing the exemption is one action of BBM worthy of praise. The people need a lot more to get them out of the mire.**