MANILA, The Philippines-The Chairman of the House committee on transportation and communications of the Philippine Congress is reported to have said he will block any move to impose taxes on short message services (SMS), more popularly known among Filipinos as “text messaging.”
This came after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suggested this week that the government impose taxes for the use of the SMS services on cellular phones to improve tax collection.
Representative Jacinto Paras said Filipinos should not be made to shoulder yet another expense by way of taxed SMS services. Paras scored the IMF for the proposal, saying it does not have the right to propose to the government to tax an already “overtaxed” public. This move would worsen the plight of the poor, who depend on SMS as a cheap means of communication, he added.
