The Finance Department said it is open for a compromise on the sin tax bill which hopes to change the way tobacco products are being taxed today in a move to get more revenues by increasing the tax rate.

Finance Secretary Margarito B. Teves on Wednesday said he will not object if some congressmen prefer to change the current bill on a single tax rate for any tobacco product for as long as the resulting revenues will not be lower than the expected range of P19 billion to P20 billion.

“Any combination will be helpful for as long as it will not change our expected amount. That will be for Congress to decide, not us (DOF), because we can just propose,” Teves said after meeting with legislators on Wednesday.

Under a bill filed at the House of Representatives in January, excise tax on cigarettes packed by machine would be a uniform P14 per pack, but would be adjusted automatically after two years based on the consumer price index.

At the moment, there are four types of tax rates levied on tobacco products such as cigarettes, levying more on the high-priced products while the cheaper products get a tax rate for as low as P1 per pack.

According to some proposals, Congress wants to have two types of tax rates—one for high-priced  brands and another for cheaper products.

The sin tax bill is the heart of Teves’s plan to reform some of the tax measures passed earlier in order to collect more revenues to limit the deficit to P200 billion. Collection of both the Bureaus of Internal Revenue and Customs were down significantly as a result of a slowing in the general economy and the country’s imports, according to the officials of the two agencies.

Teves also wants Congress to enact a simplified net income-tax system or SNITS, from which government hopes to collect some P5 billion more. He also wants solons to pass the fiscal incentives rationalization bill, which will earn the national government some P10 billion more.

All in all, the government will earn at least P35 billion in additional revenue each year from this proposed programs—assuming the DOF version of the bill will not be diluted by revisions of the legislators as the bills are passed into law.

Asia Brewery Inc. had said earlier a single excise rate for alcohol products would force the company to raise prices by 41 percent, which it fears would discourage the market.

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 said.

Beer giant San Miguel Corp. and alcohol producer Destileria Limtuaco said they support proposals to increase taxes on alcohol products like beer and liquor subject only to the rates to be imposed. Other players, meanwhile, are calling on the committee to go easy on the industry, which they claimed is already heavily taxed.

Cigarette makers La Suerte Cigar and Cigarette Factory and Mighty Corp. also made separate appeals against the imposition of a single tax rate for all cigarette brands. Both companies claimed that doing so would disfranchise small Filipino players and favor foreign companies producing imported brands.