Finance Undersecretary Karl Chua (File photo)
MANILA – About 2.6 million workers of small businesses that pay proper taxes will be the initial beneficiaries of the PHP51 billion worth of subsidies planned for workers belonging to the middle class, a government official said on Monday.
Finance Undersecretary Karl Chua said when the government implemented the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Luzon since March 16, which will last until April 30, 2020, local governments in the Visayas and Mindanao followed suit with different levels of quarantines.
This, he said, shut down most businesses except those allowed by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) like those involved in the delivery of essential services like the supermarkets, drug stores, and logistics related to these businesses.
Chua said there are about 1.6 million small businesses in the informal sector and about 436,000 of them were forced to temporarily close during the quarantine period.
He said the sector has about 3.4 million workers but only 2.6 million, or about 76.47 percent of the total, will be prioritized in the wage subsidy program.
Chua said the 2.6 million workers are those included in the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s (BIR) Alphalist, or those with employers who comply with the agency’s submissions.
He said they will also use the data of the Social Security System (SSS) “so that we can target better.”
“Kasi alam natin kung sino sila at i-incentivize po natin 'yung better compliance kasi 'yung mga nagko-contribute ng tax at ng SSS, 'yan po ang unang tutulungan natin (Because we know who they are, we will incentivize better compliance because we will help those who pay their taxes and SSS contributions),” he added.
Chua said they will also help the remaining 800,000 workers whose employers are not compliant to BIR and SSS rules but they will be second priority.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, in a text message to journalists Tuesday, said that since the workers to be helped belong to the formal sector, they can check whether or not the latter have claimed other financial support from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to prevent aid redundancy. (PNA)
