The House committee on ways and means approved a bill granting a 25% discount on a year’s worth of personal income taxes of health workers fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

On Monday, December 7, the House panel unanimously passed a still-unnumbered substitute bill that would provide for a 25% tax discount on the salaries, compensation, and gross receipts from the exercise of profession by medical frontliners for taxable year 2020.

The tax discount, however, would not cover the income received by health workers from their other businesses, investments, and other kinds of passive income not related to their duties to serve and treat COVID-19 patients. 

House committee on ways and means chairperson Joey Salceda said lawmakers approved the bill “because we do not want to tax the hazard pays and other allowances earned by the frontliners from COVID-19.”

“The 25% discount will likely cover the taxes they would have owed on their COVID-19 allowances. That was the state’s attempt to compensate them for their service. Let me be clear: I do not want the government to tax their heroism,” the Albay 2nd District lawmaker said.

The committee-approved measure is a substitute for House Bill No. 7351, which initially proposed a total tax exemption for medical frontliners in 2020.

But this was too much for the Department of Finance, which said that such a tax exemption would cost the government some P9 billion in revenue. Nueva Ecija 1st District Representative Estrellita Suansing then suggested the 25% tax discount as a compromise.

Filipino healthcare workers have long been overwhelmed by the crippling COVID-19 pandemic, with cases in the country reaching 431,630 as of Monday.

Though the Bayanihan law grants health workers special allowances and hazard pay during the COVID-19 crisis, these do not always reach them on time. Others did not receive the full amount, like the family of Cainta nurse Maria Theresa Cruz, who died of COVID-19 in July. 

Several Filipino health workers have opted to work abroad instead due to low wages and poor working conditions in their home country. – Rappler.com