Kabataan Party-list Representative Raymond “Mong” Palatino today disapproves of the approval by the House of Representatives in the committee level of a measure imposing a five-centavo excise tax on every text message, saying that the “no pass-on provision” is no assurance that consumers will not shoulder the additional burden.

“Despite statements from the authors of the bill and House Speaker Propspero Nograles that the “text tax’” should not add to the burdens of the tax paying public, these do not guarantee that consumers will not shoulder this additional burden,” said Palatino, who is a convenor of the consumer rights group TxtPower.

Palatino said that the present deregulated telecommunications industry makes it virtually impossible for the government to impose the “no pass-on” provision. “The government is simply powerless to stop telcos from imposing new fees to consumers in light of the implementation of this new text tax,” he said.

Palatino also said that the profit-driven telecommunications companies may just invent new mechanisms to maintain their profiteering in lieu of a text tax. “The discovery of dagdag-bawas schemes of telcoms such as text scams, additional charges and vanishing cellphone loads have shown us that these telcos are not only abusive but creative as well. Because they are deregulated, they can easily circumvent the law,” he said.

Instead of introducing a tex tax, Palatino said the government should scrap its deregulation policy and closely monitor the excesses committed by telecommunications companies. ###