SEN. Sergio “Serge” Osmeña 3rd on Thursday expressed openness to the plan to use the proposed sin tax reform bill of Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago as basis of the Senate Committee on ways and means in crafting the chamber’s version.

Osmena said that using Santiago’s version would save the Senate time although, he expressed doubt on the possibility of the chamber being able to pass a new sin tax bill by this year.

Santiago’s version of the sin tax bill is seeking to raise at least P60-billion additional revenue from tobacco and alcohol products higher than that of Recto’s P20-billion and the House of Representatives P30-billion.

Unlike the version of the House that imposes higher taxes on tobacco products, the Santiago’s bill proposes a P30-P30 billion burden sharing for liquors and cigarettes.

Osmena said that Sen. Franklin Drilon, who chairs the Senate Committee on Finance and acting ways and means committee chairman, would be very busy defending the 2013 national budget and may not have enough time for the sin tax.

“Anybody can do one thing well at a time and the priority is the budget,” Osmena added.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile in an earlier interview also said that he is in favor of using the Santiago’s sin tax version because he believes that tax burden must be evenly distributed among various products that will bear it.

The Senate ways and means committee is planning to use the proposed sin tax reform bill of Santiago as basis of the committee after Sen. Ralph Recto decided to withdraw his committee report after receiving heavy criticism.

Enrile said that there is a need to be equitable in the distribution of tax burden since both are considered as sin products.

The Senate president is also in favor of the P60-billion projected revenue as a starting point so that Senators will have enough room to scale it down to the level that will be acceptable to every one concern.

“We should start with a bill that gives the highest yield to the government and it’s up to the members of the Senate to scale it down to a level they think is reasonable and effective enough to give revenues to the government but reasonable enough not to destroy the industry,” Enrile said in an earlier interview.

Suspicion that politics may have played a part on the House sin tax version because of the huge disparity on the tax burden distribution between alcohol and tobacco wherein from the P31 billion projected revenue P26.8 billion is expected from tobacco while P4.48 billion from alcohol products.