When travel is taxed

By Herman M. Lagon

The last thing an ordinary Filipino needs before an international flight is one more counter that feels like a small punishment for having a reason to leave. Not a “rich people problem” reason, either. A contract signing. A scholarship slot. A father’s burial. A sibling in labor abroad. A 5-year-planned family trip. A nurse finally taking her trip after years of night shifts. At the airport, the costs already stack up quietly — visa fees, document authentication, medical exams, travel insurance, baggage add-ons, and the familiar “ay, may kulang pa pala.” The travel tax sits there like a final nudge saying: before you chase opportunity, pay for the privilege of walking out the door. At current rates, it is PHP 1,620 for economy and PHP 2,700 for first class.

That is why proposals to abolish the travel tax, or at least exempt all Filipinos from it, deserve more than a shrug. A measure now being discussed in the House aims to repeal the old legal basis of the levy and end collection altogether, with a built-in fairness detail: taxes already paid for flights scheduled after the law takes effect should be refunded. That refund clause matters because it treats the travel tax as what it really is in people’s lives — an added cost that can be decisive, not decorative. For a family of five traveling economy, PHP 1,620 each becomes PHP 8,100 — money that could cover a night’s stay, a week’s allowance, or the contingency fund a parent keeps “just in case the child gets sick abroad.” The policy question is simple: if the State wants to fund tourism and related programs, should it do so by charging citizens at the moment they are trying to move?

Supporters of keeping the levy often point to its earmarks, and to be fair, the earmarks look noble on paper. Under the Tourism Act framework cited in proposed reforms, travel tax collections are split 50–40–10: 50% for tourism infrastructure via TIEZA, 40% for tourism-related programs through CHED, and 10% for culture and arts through the NCCA. Nobody serious wants to starve tourism roads, training, heritage sites, or cultural work. The issue is not whether those goals matter. The issue is whether the funding mechanism is honest, equitable, and efficient. A levy that hits at the airport is easy to collect and hard to question, which is precisely why it invites complacency. When funding is automatic, urgency to prove results can get softer than it should be. When funding is debated annually in the budget, programs have to explain themselves in daylight.

The travel tax also suffers from a basic fairness problem: it is not shaped like a fair tax. It is closer to a flat fee — meaning it bites harder, proportionally, for those who have less. PHP 1,620 is not the same pain for a business executive and a domestic worker visiting her child abroad. It also lands awkwardly on us Filipinos who already shoulder the usual taxes at home: income tax for those who pay it, VAT on almost everything, and the steady “fees” of living — transport, inflation, rent, and school costs. One activist friend of mine was blunt: “E-VAT tanggalin nyo….” That frustration is familiar, even when it is roughly phrased. People are not only questioning one levy; they are questioning the logic of stacking charges while services feel thin and corruption systemic. The travel tax becomes a symbol because it is visible, specific, and timed at a moment when a person already feels financially stretched.

There is also an odd philosophical tension in charging citizens for mobility in a labor-exporting country. We celebrate remittances, we rely on overseas workers, we encourage global competitiveness, then we keep an “exit fee” architecture that feels like a relic. Yes, many categories are exempted — Overseas Filipino Workers, infants under two, pilgrims on certain religious travel, and others recognized under implementing rules. But the everyday Pinoy traveler often caught in the net is not necessarily wealthy: a student with a funded program but unfunded extra fees; a researcher presenting a paper whose registration is covered but whose “small charges” are not; a parent rushing for family care overseas; a young professional relocating for work, a family hoping to visit Bangkok as a respite from years of labor at home. Exemptions, when too narrow, can accidentally reward only those who fit clean labels while missing the lived messiness of why people travel.

The deeper critique is not that travel tax revenues do nothing. The deeper critique is that the system encourages a convenient story: “You paid, therefore you benefited.” That is a comforting sentence, but it is not a performance report. If we want clean logic, programs for tourism infrastructure, higher education development, and cultural preservation should compete in the national budget like other priorities do, with measurable deliverables, procurement transparency, and consequence for under-spending or weak outcomes. One proposed reform model does exactly that: it ends collection after effectivity, requires refunds for applicable flights, and shifts the needed funding to appropriations under the General Appropriations Act for the concerned agencies. That approach does not kill the programs. It simply stops charging the traveler as the default sponsor.

A reasonable compromise, if lawmakers want to move carefully, is to prioritize Filipino relief first: exempt all citizens entirely, or at least exempt economy-class Pinoy travelers while retaining the fee for non-citizens or premium classes, then review results after a fixed period. Even a targeted tax exemption would immediately lower friction for the group most likely to feel it. If the concern is revenue predictability, then the budget can bridge the transition in a transparent way, instead of quietly collecting at the terminal. If the concern is “people might travel more and spend less locally,” the answer is not to penalize mobility; the answer is to make the local economy a place people want to spend in because services work and wages breathe.

Our teachers, in particular, understand this argument instinctively because they see what hidden fees do to student decisions. When education becomes a series of “small” costs — projects, uniforms, transport — it is the poor child who quietly disappears. The travel tax works similarly: it does not cancel the trip of the rich; it discourages the trip of the borderline. It can push a family to delay a medical consultation, skip a training, or shrink a once-in-years visit into “next time na lang.” A humane State does not romanticize sacrifice as the default plan. It designs systems that remove needless obstacles, then asks citizens to meet responsibility on fair ground.

If government wants a clean moral test for the travel tax, it is this: does the levy make the country better, or does it simply make departure more expensive? The proposal to scrap it (or exempt locals from it) is not an anti-tourism stance. It is a pro-clarity stance: fund public programs through transparent budgeting, not through airport penalties that feel like toll gates on personal dreams. End the travel tax, keep the missions — then make the missions defend their budgets with results. When we are asked to step out into the world for work, family, study, or survival, the State should not be the one adding a final, unnecessary weight to the luggage.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.