Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday signed into law a measure that imposes a 12 percent value-added tax on foreign-based firms providing digital services in the country.
The tax applies to a vast range of products and services including search engines, software licensing, mobile apps, online games, Webinars, music, advertising, warehousing and cloud services, Web site hosting and electronic marketplaces.
“Whether you are a small tech start-up or a global tech giant based halfway around the world, if you are making money here in the Philippines, you are part of our community,” Marcos said in a speech at a signing ceremony attended by legislators.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Local businesses and international digital platforms now compete on equal terms. We no longer will be playing by different sets of rules,” he said.
Failure to pay the tax would lead to the suspension of business operations in the Philippines.
Philippine Senate President Francis Escudero said the law plugs a tax revenue loophole caused by the “vagueness” of existing laws pertaining to taxation of e-commerce transactions, particularly foreign-based companies that provide services to local consumers.
Other countries have been imposing the same tax on digital services and transactions now that their consumption has become almost universal, Escudero said in a statement.
The law exempts educational services such as online courses and Webinars provided by privately owned schools.
Marcos said the government expects to raise 105 billion pesos (US$1.87 billion) in tax revenue over the next five years to be used to build thousands of school classrooms, rural health clinics and rural roads.
Five percent of the revenues would be allocated to creative industries in the Philippines, including artists, filmmakers and musicians.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS