The great American baseball pitcher Satchel Paige once said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” That’s great advice for life — but not when it comes to increasing our competitiveness in comparison to ASEAN peers.
There, the Philippines is always wise to look back, look around, and find ways to expand our international trade in goods and services, and attract foreign investment, all to drive economic growth. Sometimes, even highly technical issues can have an outsized impact in promoting — or deterring — our country’s growth. Here’s one example that can be easily solved to show the Philippines treats its foreign partners fairly.
As with most countries, the Philippines has a series of treaties with our major trading partners designed to avoid the payment of double tax. Among other provisions, the treaties typically provide that payments made by customer residents here in the Philippines for services rendered by a foreign company should not be subject to Philippine tax, specifically, a withholding tax. That is fair and a standard provision in these tax treaties.
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