THE long-awaited rules that will implement tax breaks for persons with disabilities and their kin who care for them will be signed on December 1, Department of Social Welfare and Development officials said, in reply to a query from Senate Minority Leader Ralph Recto during the budget debates.
The DSWD’s assurance was confirmed by Senate finance chairman Senator Loren Legarda, who conveyed it to Recto in the course of his interpellation of the DSWD’s P129.8-billion budget request for 2017.
To stress that the signing of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act RA 10754 “is a go,” DSWD officials invited Recto and senators to the event to be held in the agency’s central office in Quezon City.
“Well, what can I say? ….It may have moved along in crutches, but it is arriving,” Recto said.
Recto viewed the “imminent promulgation” of the IRR of RA 10754 “as a strong indicator that the administration’s plan to revoke certain tax-free privileges of PWDs and senior citizens will no longer push through.”
“The optimistic that I am, I see this as a good omen that the plan to take away tax discounts of seniors and PWDs has been abandoned,” Recto said.
Recto, author of the law, has been persistent in pressing the DSWD in releasing the IRR of Republic Act 10754, which President Aquino signed into law on March 23, 2016.
RA 10754 exempts PWDs from all sales taxes on certain goods and services, like transport fares, medicines, medical and dental services and laboratory fees, raising the discount to 32 percent.
It also grants a P25,000 annual income tax deduction to relatives within the fourth civil degree of consanguinity or affinity, who are caring for and living with a PWD.
