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In candidate-centered democratic polities, individual legislators exert an inordinately-heavy influence on policy making. This is so since politicians need to develop personal reputations to get themselves elected into office and to stimulate their political careers. Their party affiliations will not matter much in these political settings and they try to develop their reputations as reliable representatives vis-a-vis constituents, supporters, and financiers. For the benefit of their constituents, they ‘bring home the bacon’ by way of pork allocations to finance local public works and other note-worthy projects that can generate local employment or bring desired goods and services like medicines, sports equipment, and the like to the home district. To non-resident supporters and financiers, legislators must be able to offer divisible policy favors such as government contracts, subsidized credit, fiscal incentives, and tax breaks.
However, legislators do not participate in policy making only through their individual selves. They do so through legislative…
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In the previous blog entry, we noted how President Ramos was rebuffed by legislators from his own political party in his attempts to expand the coverage of the value-added tax (VAT) during the first half of his term.
Despite this setback, the imperatives of the tight fiscal situation forced Ramos to propose a more comprehensive tax reform program (CTRP) during the second half of his presidential term. The Comprehensive Tax Reform Program (CTRP) of the Ramos presidency consisted of three laws—Republic Act No. 8184, which restructured the excise tax on petroleum products in support of the Republic Act No. 8180, otherwise known as the Oil Deregulation Law; Republic Act No. 8240, which shifted the taxation of so-called “sin products” from ad valorem to specific; and Republic Act No. 8424, otherwise known as the Tax Reform Act of 1997, which initiated changes in individual and corporate income and in tax administration.
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In this blog entry, we continue sharing parts of the draft book on political institutions and policy making in the country. To sharpen the discussion, we focus our attention on tax policy-making with emphasis on tax measures adopted during the presidency of Fidel Ramos.
I believe this discussion is timely given recent warnings that the incoming president will be saddled with fiscal deficits and need to raise revenues by way of raising value-added-tax (VAT) rates and rationalization of current fiscal incentives.
The examination of tax policies is a good way of seeing the policy making process of a country in action. Taxation touches almost every aspect of the economy and society and taxation is the area of public policy where the most interests are at stake. For one, a number of public policy decisions (such as public spending and borrowing) and private economic behavior (such as spending and investments) are…
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