President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed into law this morning the measure exempting minimum wage earners from paying income tax and also increasing the personal exemptions for other employees.

The President signed Republic Act 9504 or “An Act Amending Sections 22,24,34,35 and 79 of Republic Act 8424,as Amended, otherwise known as the National Internal Revenue Code of 1987,” in simple rites held in Malacanang in the presence of the measure’s principal authors and sponsors.
 
Senators Ramon Revilla, Jr., Juan Ponce Enrile, Francis Escudero, Richard Gordon, Manuel Roxas lll, House Speaker Prospero Nograles,Rep. Exequiel Javier and Martin Romualdez, among others, witnessed the signing ceremony.
 
The President, who for several times urged Congress to pass this urgent bill that would help ease the impact of continuing rise in oil and food prices on the people, was visibly pleased.
 
The new law stands to provide relief and additional money to spend for basic necessities especially for the minimum wage earners.
 
The new law also exempts from tax all holiday, night differential, hazard and overtime pay received by minimum wage earners.
 
The new law also increases personal exemptions for individual tax payers and additional deduction for qualified dependents.
 
The personal exemptions are as follows: for single: from P20,000 to P50,000; for head of family: from P25,000 to P50,000; for married: from P32,000 to P50,000; for each qualified dependent not exceeding 4: from P8,000 to P25,000.
 
A family of six, with two working spouses and four dependent children used to enjoy total exemptions of P96,000. With the new law, the total amount of exemptions would be P200,000.
 
Minimum wage earners have been exempted from withholding tax since January 2006, through Revenue Regulations 01-2006 as a form of focused support by government for low income earners and RA 9504 formalized this tax exemption order for about 500,000 minimum wage earners both in the private and public sector.
 
Finance Secretary Margarito Teves said the government would forego some P3.16 billion annually in tax revenues with the income tax exemption of minimum wage earners.

He added that the new personal exemption levels would also cost government some P11.09 billion in revenue losses.
 
However, Teves said government could recover tax revenue losses from RA 9504 with the imposition of optional standard deductions (OSD) in filing business income tax returns.

 “ Our estimate is that we stand to gain some P15.03 billion from the OSD features,” Teves said.
 
The OSD simplifies the filing of income tax returns and benefits, in particular, professionals and medium, small and micro entrepreneurs.
 
The OSD would also encourage businesses in the underground to operate legally.

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