Another comment on the BIRA by the BIR: Ermin Cabanela6 hours ago While the BIRs drive to collect proper taxes from all taxable Filipinos is right (even though corruption scandals like the recent PDAF scandal has made taxation very unpleasant for most Filipinos), this recent BIR advertisement sends the wrong message and unjustly besmirches a profession whose importance to national life can hardly be overemphasized. The ad makes the unwarranted generalization that doctors are typical examples of tax evaders, thus lumping the innocent with the guilty. And such generalizations do hurt. If Filipinos became outraged when a Greek dictionary defined Filipina as a domestic helper, certainly it would not be hard to understand why doctors nowadays are outraged at this equally simplistic generalization of their profession. But what really riles doctors is the depiction of Filipino doctors as a burden to the Filipino people. Filipino doctors are anything but a burden to a people still in the grips of tuberculosis and measles, and some of whose members travel from cradle to grave without having their diseases treated by doctors. If anything, the government should be empowering doctors, encouraging them to stay despite the fact that the Western world could pay them an order of magnitude more, holding up examples like the municipal health officer of Busuanga in Palawan who ministers to 22,000 patients, or surgical residents in government hospitals on their 40th hour of duty, still serving indigent patients despite no sleep and very little food; rather than what this advertisment did - put down the entire medical profession for the mistakes of a few. The BIR could have done better by simply publishing a list of tax evaders, which would have punished the guilty only. But by putting up an image of a doctor as a burden, not only was the message of paying the right taxes not efficiently sent across, it unjustly and uselessly offended a profession vital to national well-being.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 00:57:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015