Taxes from sin products could soon be used to help thousands of workers who lost their jobs as a consequence of the global economic downturn, so that those who enjoy smoking and a drink with friends are facing higher prices.

Finance Secretary Margarito Teves has advanced the plan to help the government generate additional revenues this year.

On Tuesday he said he was ready to plead his case before the House of Representatives and get them behind the plan to impose new taxes, topbilled by a single but higher excise-tax rate for alcohol and tobacco products.

“We’ll tell them we need their help to save jobs,” said Teves, a former congressman.

Congress is in recess but will be back before they take another respite during the Lenten holidays, and he sees it as a big challenge to approach friends and former colleagues in the House who are even now looking already to the 2010 national elections, when additional taxes could mean less votes and even defeat.

“I am hopeful. I know it is not going to be easy, but I feel it is important to have the proceeds now because I’d like to be able to spend for more infrastructure and social services,” he said. His vision of higher tax collection includes not just the adoption of the single higher excise rate but also that of a more reasonable or rationalized fiscal-incentives program.

Teves wants Congress to enact a simplified net income-tax system or SNITS, whose barebones structure that is bare of discretionary features is seen to allow for greater collection efficiency. It would leave no room for corrupt practices, unlike in the current system where taxes paid could depend on the whim of a taxman.

He has influential supporters in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas whose deputy governor, Diwa Guinigundo, told the Chamber of Thrift Banks in a recent event that the way forward “was for government to strengthen its revenue stream, perhaps via new tax measures or via the rationalization of the fiscal-incentives scheme.”

Guinigundo said Teves stands to realize between P20 billion and P30 billion in additional revenue each year from this proposed program.

But there are objections to the Teves proposal, but not from the Legislature. Asia Brewery Inc. has said a single excise rate for alcohol products would force the company to raise prices by 41 percent, which the company fears would discourage the market, already under price stresses from a series of commodities price adjustments in recent months.

ABI chief financial officer Jose Gabriel Olives sees the possible shutdown of firms like ABI if the market dries up enough with only the well-off buying their products.

“The wholesale price of our economy-priced beers will have to increase by at least 41 percent in order to accommodate the new taxes, an amount we are certain the market cannot bear,” Olives earlier told legislators.