Squeeze the virtual turnip

LAST week Ricky Carandang in The Coming Deficit Blowout wrote that our government wasn’t collecting enough money, and so we’d all better expect an increase in taxes. He wrote this a few days before the national treasurer resigned, as he (Omar Cruz, the national treasurer who quit) acknowledged it, while the going was good.

So if increased taxes are in our future, what shape might those future taxes take?

One answer came out of left field. The Mike Abundo Effect started the ball rolling, by quoting from a Manila Times article (but not linking to the article itself, so that in commenting on the whole thing, It’s hip2b2 has asked for anyone, anyone, to find the original article) whose gist is that a gentleman named Edgardo Cabarrios was quoted as saying that the National Telecommunications Commission wants to classify websites, including blogs, to register with the government, presumably as a prelude to taxing them. Blogs and websites would be considered a value-added service, you see.

Edgardo Cabarrios has apparently been NTC department chief for common carriers authorization for ages now, and his name has regularly cropped up in the news, whether concerning the VoIP brouhaha, or the proposal to mandate compulsory registration of SIM cards, as well as rather nifty proposals to allow people to keep the same number, regardless of the network they subscribe to, for example. But this latest attribution has gotten bloggers all lathered up.
See Pinoy Problogger (using the famous line from the Borg) and Yugatech, who snappily borrowed the phrase“all your base are belong to us,” to headline his take on the NTC official’s alleged statement.

The Unlawyer takes a look at the potential basis for such a requirement, finds a TMC.net article to link to:

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has released a draft circular that seeks to put value-added service (VAS) providers in the telecom and technology industry under its ambit.

If the proposed rules are approved, all firms in the loose VAS provider industry - from mom-and-pop ventures to those owned by large multinationals - would have to register with the regulator…

Services covered by the proposed rules include messaging, audio and video conferencing, voice mail, e-mail, information services such as road traffic and visa application data, gaming services except gambling, applications services such as mobile banking, content and program services such as music and ring tones, audio text, domain name hosting, fax, IP multicasting, virtual private networks, and PBX hosting.

“The foregoing list of value-added services may be revised, modified, expanded or shortened by the Commission after due public consultation,” the regulator said.

The NTC defined “value-added services”, in an earlier circular signed in 2005, as “enhanced services” beyond those ordinarily offered by incumbent local and foreign telecom operators.

Unlawyer says the practical effect will be registration fees that may be easy enough for multinationals to absorb, but which will be pretty stiff for ordinary Filipino bloggers. If you read Unlawyer’s list of the kinds of websites that would be covered, you’ll understand why Mike Abundo says proposals like these is one reason companies like Paypal don’t set up shop in the Philippines (and the absence of a good, cheap, widely-used service like Paypal is often suggested as a reason e-commerce hasn’t taken off as big as it should, locally, among other things).

The income-generating aspect of the proposal, if true (my hunch is that the whole thing is a trial balloon, and who knows, perhaps the statement being attributed to Cabarrios is being airbrushed, so to speak, off the face of the internet?), will keep bloggers’ and others hackles raised. But here’s what raised my hackles: it’s all something that could be very, very useful, National Security-wise.

Imagine Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez armed with such a list, and on a bad quote day. Jeepers Creepers.

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