BUT THAT is also exactly why the conversation should mature instead of collapse. “Hard to do” is not the same as “do not do.” Bank secrecy rules have weakened globally, information exchange standards have improved, and tax administrations now have more tools than they did when old wealth-tax stories are casually invoked as universal cautionary tales.
Even the OECD, while cautious about recurrent net wealth taxes, acknowledges that governments have reason to address wealth inequality through the tax system and that country context matters. In places where capital is undertaxed, inheritance is weakly taxed, or wealth concentration is severe, the case for stronger taxation of wealth grows.
That does not have to mean a reckless annual tax on everything that glitters. It could mean a narrow tax on ultra-high net worth, stronger estate and gift taxes, better real property valuation, tighter treatment of trusts and shell holdings, and a cleaner registry of beneficial ownership.
In short, the argument is not only “tax the rich more.” It is “stop building a tax culture that is brave only with consumption and wages.” That is a different sentence, and a better one.
For many of us, especially teachers, the point becomes sharper when one asks where relief should come from when oil prices misbehave. Suspending fuel excise taxes can indeed bring down pump prices, with recent estimates in the current debate placing the possible reduction at around P6 to P10 per liter. That is not trivial. It matters to jeepney drivers, delivery riders, farmers, fisherfolk, and school employees who travel far.
Yet a broad fuel tax suspension also benefits those who own SUVs, fleets, generators, vacation vans, and lifestyles that can absorb price shocks better than most. By contrast, a carefully designed wealth measure targets those with far greater capacity to contribute. Imagine the politics of saying this plainly: instead of asking every mother buying sardines, every tricycle driver buying diesel, and every teacher spending for the next week’s visual aids to carry the burden first, why not ask more from people whose daily market swings can erase or add more money than a public servant earns in years? The question is not radical. It is almost embarrassingly ordinary.
Of course, another point raised by ordinary citizens is also correct: no tax reform will earn trust if public money keeps leaking through corruption, waste, ghost projects, sweetheart contracts, and the ancient local miracle by which a road is forever being repaired yet never quite repaired enough.
That criticism should not be treated as a distraction. It is part of the same argument. Better taxation and better spending must travel together. Asking the wealthy to pay more while ignoring procurement abuse is like replacing a water tank while the pipes are still laughing.
But that reality is not an excuse to avoid progressive reform. It is a reason to pair it with tougher transparency, simpler procurement monitoring, open project data, and real punishment for theft. The country does not have to choose between plugging leaks and improving the fairness of taxes. It can do both, and it probably has to. Even defenders of wealth taxation admit that design and governance matter; otherwise, the proposal becomes a banner, not a solution.
That is fair. But it is equally fair to say that hiding behind implementation difficulty has long been the preferred sport of systems that work quite efficiently when collecting from those least able to argue back.
So, why not consider a wealth tax for the rich, especially when fuel taxes on everyone are suddenly negotiable? That is the heart of it. Not a tantrum against success. Not a cheap class war slogan. Just a sober question about burden-sharing in a country that loves to praise resilience because it has asked too much of it.
If government is willing to forego revenue so the public can survive another season of pump-board cruelty, then it should also be willing to study revenue sources that are more progressive, more humane, more sustainable, and more consistent with the old civic idea that those who have benefited most from the economy can help steady it when ordinary people are gasping.
A good society does not only ask who can pay. It asks who will feel the payment least, and who has been feeling too much for too long. On that test, the teacher, the driver, the fisher, and the clerk have already paid enough. The billionaires can enter the conversation now.
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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./PN
