We beg to differ.
It’s a he-said-she-said situation at the moment as mainstream media focuses its “news reporting” on the basis of soundbytes and snippets of statements made by boxing champ Manny Pacquiao and the Philippines’ chief tax collector Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Kim Henares. It all started with “reports” following the boxing match between Pacquiao and…
Tax evasion should not be a criminal offense anymore in the Philippines. After all, some of the country’s public servants, those who blatantly steal taxpayers’ money, do not get prosecuted or go to jail. It is even quite baffling how members of Congress made a big deal out of former Chief Justice Renato Corona’s undeclared…
Judging from the reaction of the readers to previous articles on squatters in the Philippines, there are definitely more decent Filipinos who are fed up with squatters who bite the hand that feed them compared to the number of readers who defended some of the squatters’ parasitic tendencies. After my suggestion that illegal settlers should…
Read More “A sustainable solution to the squatter problem in the Philippines” »
Perhaps if our “activists” focused more on creating buzzes around real issues rather than on presuming to police the campaign tactics of our politicians and auditing their token fly-by-night “platforms” we’d gain more traction around creating a more issues-based political discourse. Indeed, unless you are as brilliant as Lee Kuan Yew, there is little point…
Read More “SC upholds candidates’ freedom to air as much TV and radio political ads as they want!” »
Funny the way presidential sister and Queen of All Philippine Media Kris Aquino comes into the fore whenever Filipino pep for the “right” people needs to be pump primed. Most recently the buzz is her emerging as “top Filipino taxpayer” paying a whopping (by Philippine standards) 49.87 million pesos (USD1.2 million) to the Philippine government….
Read More “Kris Aquino pays top tax dollar in the spirit of Daang Matuwid!” »
A few days ago I came across a news article saying that the government is mulling higher taxes on soft drinks. This isn’t new as increases in levies on soft drinks have been brought out for discussion and proposed in the past. The motivation for increasing the tax on soft drinks was tied up to…
The rich, those who profit most from society, are also those who give back the least. Today, it seems, that nothing crystallizes this idea better than recent news that BIR Commissioner Kim Henares “exempted the country’s richest 1% from paying the newly-imposed VAT on association dues.” Here’s an excerpt from Vic Agustin’s Cocktales: An official of the Forbes…
Let me start with a nice funny story to lighten things up a bit before I get down to some serious stuff. This story was forwarded to me by a good friend of mine. Here it goes… Recently, while I was working in the flower beds in the front yard, my neighbors stopped to chat…