MANILA (Reuters) – A Philippine lawmaker has launched a invoice in parliament aimed toward taxing large tech companies resembling Fb, Alphabet’s Google and Youtube, Netflix and Spotify, to lift funds to battle the coronavirus.

The invoice seems to be to lift 29 billion pesos ($571 million) by imposing a worth added tax on digital providers supplied within the Philippines, a key progress space for e-commerce transactions as its persons are among the many world’s heaviest customers of social media.

“We spent to battle COVID-19 and we’d like extra to proceed preventing it and get well,” Congressman Joey Salceda, the invoice’s principal writer, informed Reuters.

“It sends a robust sign to the world that the Philippines is prepared for the digital transformation. We’re placing our taxation so as.”

Beginning subsequent yr, Salceda stated, funds raised from new taxes would even be used to finance digital packages resembling a nationwide broadband challenge and digital studying, to fill the training hole attributable to college closures.

However it might take some time earlier than the proposal is scheduled for debate, as lawmakers are busy deliberating on an financial stimulus bundle to jumpstart the Philippine economic system, ravaged by pandemic-induced lockdowns.

Google, Netflix, and Spotify weren’t instantly accessible for remark. Fb declined to remark.

The Philippines has recorded 13,434 virus infections, together with 846 deaths and three,000 recoveries, and has run practically 208,000 exams amongst its inhabitants of greater than 107 million.

Final week, neighbouring Indonesia introduced plans for VAT of 10% on digital merchandise from July, to spice up revenues amid the pandemic. Southeast Asian regulators held talks final yr on a region-wide effort to tax tech giants extra.

($1=50.74 Philippine pesos)

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Further Reporting by Fanny Potkin in Jakarta; Enhancing by Clarence Fernandez)