WEAPONISING TAXES
26 April 2025
Why the Working Citizens, Middle Class, and Small Businesses Will Carry the Crushing Weight of the Marcos-Romualdez Administration’s Tax Hikes
OPINION
By Rob Rances
The storm is here.
And it won’t be the billionaires or political dynasties who will feel its first strike.
It will be the workers.
The middle class.
The small business owners—the real backbone of this nation.
I. Under Duterte: Taxes Were Reformed, Not Weaponized
During the Duterte administration, taxes were raised—but with a strategy, not with cruelty.
The TRAIN Law eased the income tax burden for workers and the middle class. The heavier load was rightly placed on sin products, luxury goods, and non-essential items. And as the government borrowed, the people could see where it went:
roads, airports, bridges, jobs—tangible progress that touched ordinary lives.
It wasn’t perfect.
But at least there was a clear return on the people’s sacrifices.
II. Under Marcos-Romualdez: Taxes Rise Without Progress
Today, under the Marcos-Romualdez leadership, the rules have changed—and not for the better.
New taxes are being floated on:
• Savings and bank deposits,
• Estate transfers and donations,
• Stock market gains,
• Digital transactions and freelance work,
• Even remittances and investments from OFWs—the very lifeline that props up our economy.
Yet ask yourself:
Where are the matching opportunities?
Where are the jobs, the infrastructure, the industries?
The painful answer is clear:
There are none to match the burden.
Instead, we see:
• P4.64 trillion in new debt accumulated in just 32 months,
• A staggering $3.0 billion Balance of Payments deficit (and counting),
• Public trust in freefall,
• And a government scrambling to plug holes—by reaching into the pockets of its own people.
Are we being taxed for national progress?
Or taxed simply to keep a sinking ship afloat?
III. Why the Middle Class and Small Businesses Will Suffer the Most
The super-rich have offshore accounts, tax shelters, political shields. The powerful have networks to protect their wealth.
But the middle class?
The small business owners?
The freelancers?
The OFWs?
They are the easiest to track, the easiest to tax, and the hardest to shield. Their incomes are stable, visible, and vital to daily economic life—making them the government’s default ATM.
It’s a cruel but simple math:
• Borrow recklessly,
• Spend without serious reform,
• Run low on cash,
• Then squeeze the very people whose daily labor keeps the country alive.
IV. This Is Not Tax Reform. This Is Fiscal Exploitation.
Under Duterte:
Higher taxes meant better infrastructure.
Borrowed money meant visible nation-building.
Today:
Higher taxes mean plugging fiscal holes.
Borrowed money fuels a cycle of waste and desperation.
There is no credible wave of infrastructure.
No bold industrialization program.
No inspiring national vision beyond surviving one crisis after another.
This is not reform.
This is erosion—of hope, of opportunity, of the future itself.
THINKING MAJORITY, RISE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.
If we stay silent, it is the Filipino worker—the teacher, the nurse, the sari-sari store owner, the BPO agent, the Grab driver—who will carry the cost of decisions made without their voice, their consent, or their welfare in mind.
If we do not resist now—resist with vigilance, with votes, and with voices—then someday soon, the price won’t just be higher taxes.
It will be something far worse:
The death of the simple dream that honest work can still build a better life.
