Press Release
November 10, 2015

STATEMENT ON SALARY STANDARDIZATION LAW IV

I'm in favor of raising government salaries since we want to attract good talent to serve in government. I was one of the authors of SSL III under Joint Resolution No. 4 back in 2009. But to borrow a term the executive branch is fond of using, we should look "holistically" at the state of our working people. Higher salaries without tax reform means these government employees would go to higher tax brackets, pay more taxes, and take home less.

Secondly, while SSL IV would benefit 1.5 million government employees in the public sector, what about the other 3 to 4 million wage earners in the private sector? Given the government's sufficient fiscal space, the ideal or the win-win solution here would be to do both the salary increase and the first step of income tax reform which is to index taxes to inflation. This would provide long overdue and comprehensive relief to working Filipinos.

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