The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) appealed to the government to extend the implementation of the tax cut until the end of the year as businesses have yet to take advantage of it and fully recover from the onslaught of COVID-19 pandemic.

PCCI President Gorge Barcelon said that majority of the enterprises in the last two years, at the height of the pandemic, were unable to fully enjoy the tax cut since most of them were in strict quarantine and could hardly do actual business.

“I know there’s a deadline set but when you think about it during the last two years of the pandemic, companies have not really been able to take advantage of it. I hope that the government (Bureau of Internal Revenue) will consider extending it, hopefully within the end of the year so that we can start for the new year,” Barcelon said.

He added that over the last two years, most of the companies have had sales dropping, others were even unlucky to survive and some had extra expenses, for instance, providing transportation for workers to work.

“The feedback that I had been getting was that the one and a half years when the law became effective, it was not taken advantage of and those deductions have not been maximized,” Barcelon stressed.

The PCCI President also noted that in terms of lowering the Corporate Income Tax (CIT), the Philippines is still behind her neighbors in ASEAN. “This tax reduction is necessary for jus to be more attractive to foreign companies looking into the Philippines as their investment destination,” he added.

President Rodrigo R. Duterte in March 2021 signed Republic Act No. 11534 or Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises (CREATE) which lowered the CIT and modernized the country’s tax incentive. It reduced the CIT to 25 percent from 30 percent effective July 1, 2021 followed by a one-percentage-point cut annually from 2023 until it reaches 20% in 2027. For local small companies, an outright reduction to 20% was implemented.