Senate to consider sugar tax changes

The Senate ways and means committee on Thursday said it would consider a content-based, multi-tiered tax rate on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) with a cap of P5 as opposed to the P10 per liter proposed by the Finance department.

“There is already a suggestion from some of the stakeholders to go for a content-based tax at P5, but the drawback to that is it does not distinguish between beverages [which are sweet and are not so sweet]. So it’s a bit blunt... We might look into the possibility of putting levels to distinguish between sweeter and beverages which are not so sweet,” committee chairman Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara told reporters on the sidelines of a Senate hearing.