Taxing survival

Try finding two out of three Filipinos who agree on anything right now. Put a pro-Marcos loyalist, a die-hard Duterte supporter, an opposition stalwart, and a tired independent in one room, and they will argue until the lights go out.

Except on one thing.

According to the August 2026 National Momentum Survey (Momentum Research), 66.3% of Filipino adults want a 1% to 3% annual tax on net assets of PHP 1 billion and above. That includes majorities across Pro-Opposition (69.3%), Pro-Duterte (67.2%), Independent (66.9%), and Pro-Marcos (59.2%) voters. A rare, bruised national consensus is staring our lawmakers in the face.

And the House of Representatives is doing what it always does when asked to discomfort its wealthiest patrons — absolutely nothing.

ML Party-list Rep. Leila De Lima filed House Bill No. 9274 in May. The Makabayan bloc and TUCP Party-list Deputy Speaker Raymond Democrito Mendoza filed their own versions. All sit stalled in committee, right where the 2021 Super-Rich Tax Act went to die. It doesn’t take a political scientist to see why a chamber bankrolled by dynastic capital refuses to touch fortunes past the PHP 1 billion, PHP 2 billion, and PHP 3 billion thresholds.

Look at who is begging for breathing room. Low-income adults earning between PHP 13,873 and PHP 27,746 back the levy at 74.6%, with 19.6% strongly agreeing. They know the math in their bones. As De Lima noted, consumption taxes like the 12% VAT and excise duties eat up a working family’s pay before Friday arrives. Yet poor households earning under PHP 13,873 register the highest disapproval at 31.2% — topping the 28.4% among middle-income earners making PHP 27,746 to PHP 166,476 and 20.7% among low-income workers. When the state has failed you your whole life, you either fear the boss will cut your job or doubt those promised funds for housing, healthcare, and schools will ever reach your barangay.

Still, the technocrats aren’t wrong to urge caution. Former Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III warned in 2021 that wealth taxes trigger capital flight, and Malacañang noted European nations scrapped theirs over complex valuations and paltry yields. Popularity is not fiscal policy. If the Bureau of Internal Revenue can’t plug leaks in existing estate and corporate taxes, auditing illiquid billionaire holdings every year will fail without ruthless anti-evasion enforcement and progressive property valuation reforms.

We also need fuller transparency. Momentum Research lists margins of error of ±5.8% for the Visayas, ±5.5% for Mindanao, and ±3.8% for the Rest of Luzon, yet omits regional support figures and leaves the PHP 13,873 cutoff undefined as monthly or annual, household or personal. With billionaire wealth concentrated in Metro Manila, any law must lock in fiscal decentralization so revenues don’t rot in national agencies while provincial hospitals beg for supplies.

Watch the generational clock. Millennials back this tax at 76.6%, alongside 67.1% of Gen X and 61.9% of Gen Z, while Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation split 49.0% to 42.1%.

The trickle-down gospel is dying with the generation that preached it — and by 2028, lawmakers still shielding PHP 1 billion fortunes won’t just be out of excuses; they’ll be out of time.