Marcoses asked to pay P203-B overdue estate tax

AT GROUND LEVEL

- Satur C. Ocampo

Considering the devastations wrought by recent typhoons in many parts of the country, an activist group has urged Marcos Jr. and his family to pay their P203-billion estate tax deficiency that fell due 25 long years ago.

If paid, the estate tax deficiency could be used as seed money to fund urgently needed social services and reconstruction, said the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law (CARMMA).

CARMMA called anew on the Bureau of Internal Revenue to issue a demand letter to the Marcoses to pay up, in compliance with the Supreme Court's final judgment on the Marcos estate case issued in 1997. The ruling became executory in March 1999.

Wryly, CARMMA remarked that it's probably "too much to expect of the money-grubbing Marcoses to do their civic duty and voluntarily pay what they owed the government over the past 20 years."

"If anything," added the activist group of martial law victims, civil libertarians and peace and freedom advocates, "the Marcoses have systematically been taking back their ill-gotten wealth since their Malacañang come-back" in July 2022.

CARMMA referred to the dismissal by the Sandiganbayan, the country's anti-graft court—under Marcos Jr.'s watch—of seven cases against the family's estate.

The latest case dismissal, on Oct. 4, was based on the claim by Marcos Jr. and his mother, Imelda Romualdez-Marcos, 96, of "inordinate delay" in its prosecution.

In so deciding, the Sandiganbayan cited among other grounds, besides inordinate delay, that "enough trouble and prejudice" had been caused to mother and son when they "were made to defend themselves, secure services of paid counsel and spend for their bail."

In other words: "Kaawa-awa naman sila..."