Here’s bad news for cellphone subscribers.

The House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means approved Tuesday a bill imposing a five-centavo excise tax on text messages, but without a provision that would supposedly spare about 70 million cellphone subscribers from additional tax burden.

Committee chairman Antique Rep. Exequiel Javier said his panel did not include a “no pass-on” provision in the bill, meaning the proposed tax will be shouldered by the subscribers in the form of a higher service cost.

The tax on text was seen as a “substitute” to a proposal to increase the taxes imposed on “sin” products has been accused of sitting on bills seeking to raise sin taxes.

Once enacted, the standard rate of each text message will become P1.05 from the current P1.

“It (five-centavo tax) will be part of the cost of business. It has to be passed on (to the consumers) otherwise the business will suffer,” Javier told reporters in an interview, referring to the telecommunications industry.

The bill, which is a consolidation of the measures filed by Javier, Deputy Speaker for Luzon Eric Singson and Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez, also allows the acquisition and installation of an electronic metering device to track the revenues of telecommunications companies (telcos).

The metering device will link the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), and the telcos.

Javier said the committee will submit the bill next week to the plenary for approval on second reading.

The imposition of tax on text messages is one of the several measures aimed at generating revenues to help plug a hole in the government’s increasing budget deficit.

But since the tax involved is an excise tax, the burden will be passed on directly to individual consumers.

Javier said the proposed tax on text messaging could raise at least P36 billion a year for the government.

Under the bill, all “short message service (SMS), message service (MS) and multi-media service (MMS) sent from mobile phones and on every overseas dispatch, message, or conversation originating from the Philippines” will be subjected to excise tax.

All revenues generated from the collection of the excise tax will be set aside for education through the Department of Education (DepEd), and State Universities and Colleges (SUCs), and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).

The funds will be used as capital outlay for the construction, repair and maintenance of school buildings; procurement of computers, textbooks, desks and chairs; and scholarship, training and additional allowance for Math, Science and English teachers.

A portion of the revenues will be used to fund the acquisition of the metering device.