Singapore, Oct. 22 - Sources: The Philippines lower house of Congress has approved a bill taxing tech giants like Facebook, Google and Youtube, and Netflix.
Voting 167 - 6 -1, lawmakers approved the bill on late Tuesday on third and final readings with a bill for imposing in the Philippines 12% value-added tax VAT on digital transactions.
It will require foreign digital service providers to provide the VAT services to assess, collect and remit transactions that go through their platform.
In July 2020, the Lower House Committee approved the bill, which will tax firms providing digital service or goods through an online platform. A similar bill has been submitted to the Senate.
The bill aims to raise 29 billion pesos 579 million to help fund government measures to prevent coronavirus.
The Philippines is a growing market for big tech firms, with Filipinos in the world among the heaviest social media users.
It follows similar move by other Southeast Asian countries to generate revenues from popular digital services.
Last year was to introduce VAT on online searches. Indonesia imposed a 10% VAT on sales https://www.reuters.com com article us-indonesia - patent-digital - IT USKBN 2481 A 5 by technology firms. Early this month, Texel, India, started collecting VAT https: www.reuters.com com world start asia-pacific thailand - collect-tax - foreign-tech - firms - 2021 - 09 - 01 from foreign tech companies.