The Dangerous Drugs Board on Monday appealed to the House of Representatives to abandon the bill imposing a P0.05 centavo tax on text messaging and  instead push for measures that would make it mandatory for telecommunications firms to record and register all SIM card sales transactions.

In a press statement distributed to the House media, former Senator Vicente C. Sotto III said that as far as the DDB is concerned, SIM registration and recording of pre-paid calls and text messaging requires urgent legislative action compared to the tax on text proposal.

Last week, the ways and means committee of the House of Representatives endorsed plenary approval of a bill that would impose a P0.05 centavo tax on text messaging, to raise additional funds to support government’s formal and technical education programs.

However, the measure, jointly proposed by Reps. Eric Singson (Lakas-Kampi, Ilocos Sur) and Danilo Suarez (Lakas-Kampi, Quezon), has received flak for allegedly failing to guarantee that the fee will not be passed on to the users instead of being absorbed by telecommunications firms.

“Such legislation is barking at the wrong tree since the proposed tax transfers to the people the liability that should be shouldered by telecom companies through their highly profitable pre-paid call and text cards,” said Sotto, DDB chairman.

He recalled that this view strongly shaped up during the long hours of discussion on the issue that was taken up by the Senate Committee on Public Services that he chaired as a senator.

Sotto urged lawmakers to instead push for the approval of a measures that would make SIM registration and text messaging and call recordings mandatory in the telecommunications industry. “The law must oblige telecom companies to report and register their pre-paid call and text cards for the government to monitor their revenues and, coincidentally, discourage the use of pre-paid cards for criminal activities,” he stated.

The DDB, Sotto said, has affirmed that majority of illegal drug transactions are “carried on through pre-paid cards, including heinous crimes and kidnapping.”

“The registration of pre-paid cards will have laudable effects on our revenue situation and the fight against crime,” the country’s anti-drug czar stressed.

Meanwhile, the House committee on ways and means is set to submit for plenary deliberation the tax on text measure.

"There shall be levied, assessed, collected a specific tax equivalent to five centavos for every overseas dispatch, message, or conversation transmitted from the Philippines by telephone, telegraph, telewriter exchange, and other communication equipment services which shall be paid by the service provider," the consolidated bill read.