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Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.
LITERARY tempests come and go. The latest round is the tax being levied on Filipinos who read.
Eldridge Marvin Aceron, the executive publisher of San Anselmo Press who is a lawyer, has filed a formal request urging the Department of Finance to suspend the 12-percent value-added tax (VAT) on digital books. I know for a fact that the 12-percent VAT is no longer levied on printed books. The VAT on digital books is something new to me, and should rightfully be suspended.
Aceron said he was taxed P67.20 when he bought Maria Ressa’s “How to Stand Up to a Dictator” on Kindle. In a Facebook post, he said: “Think about that: The Philippine government taxes Filipinos for reading a Nobel laureate’s book about defending democracy.”
The situation even turns into a case of supreme irony. “Under this law, the government also taxes digital copies of Jose Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo.” The Spanish colonial regime executed Rizal for his writings. The republic now taxes them.”
Aceron has a Juris Doctor degree from Ateneo de Manila University College of Law and a BA in Philosophy, also from Ateneo. He and his wife, Celeste, have helmed the publication of books and the literary magazine, Santelmo, in the past several years. They also sponsor an exciting poetry-writing contest participated in by hundreds of poets.
He said taxing digital books is unconstitutional on the following grounds: “The Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and the right to accessible education. The Florence Agreement — which we have honored for 70 plus years — requires books to be tax-free. Moreover, the European Union taxes books at 0-5 percent. Canada exempts them. We tax them at 12 percent.”
Does the government get a lot of money from taxing e-books? Hardly, since reading e-books is not yet popular in the country. Against all odds and contrary to crystal gazers, Filipinos still prefer to read printed books, rather than words gleaming on the computer screen.
Aceron added that “the revenue from e-book taxes is negligible. But the harm to students, researchers and lower-income readers is immense.”
His advocacy is supported by the Kwan Laurel Fund, established by the social entrepreneur and writer R. Kwan Laurel, to remove barriers that keep Filipinos from tapping into sources of knowledge. The fund also supported the publication and launching of Santelmo 13, San Anselmo Press’ flagship translation anthology. The project was done in partnership with the Kagawaran ng Filipino, Loyola School, Ateneo de Manila University and is now off the press.
Aceron has given the Department of Finance 15 days to act. If there is no response from them, he will file a case before the Supreme Court. His main thesis is simple: “The government cannot tax citizens for the act of reading.”
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Duke Bagulaya bills himself as a “nomad and minor author of poetry, literary criticism and international legal theory.” He has an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of the Philippines, a Juris Doctor degree from the College of Law of the University of Santo Tomas and a PhD in international law from the University of Hong Kong. He is now a professor at a major university in Hong Kong, and has written legal tomes notable for their originality and deep legal grounding.
This catalogue of his academic degrees is important for it shows that he knows literature deep in his bones, and has the clarity of thought that comes from a very good training in the law. He gives his insights into the so-called literary mafia in the Philippines, that came in the wake of a Facebook post of a nominee for the National Artist Award who claimed that the literary mafia has snubbed him.
Bagulaya didn’t mince his words. He said: “There is really no literary mafia (but one or two, of course, may act as a gangster). There is just a field of literary production. The thing that we must know about this field is that you cannot proclaim yourself ‘[as an] emperor’ like Napoleon. The agents in the field do the consecration.”
Bagulaya was reacting to the hurt comments of the nominee’s followers. Others commented on the “abysmal literary quality” of the original post and that of his followers, but let’s not go there.
Let us continue with Bagulaya’s commentary. “As Pierre Bourdieu puts it, ‘If there is one thing that we are unable to do on our own, it is to legitimate ourselves.’ So, what appears as a mafia is just agents trying to consecrate certain works and not others.”
With the patience of Job, he draws lines in the sand. “Every field has its own mode of inclusion. You go to law school and then you take the bar exam. Then, the lawyers will start listening to you. You cannot just barge into that field and proclaim yourself an authority on the law. You cannot take shortcuts by taking an LLM or a PhD in law.
“After all, no PhD supervisor in a decent faculty of law abroad will take you in as a supervisee if you do not have a basic law degree, or you are not a lawyer in a specific jurisdiction. This is not discrimination. It is just how the field works. You need some form of symbolic capital to be in the field of law or literary production, just as you need a fat bank account and credit status in the field of economic production.
“I’m not a medical doctor. I can’t attend a gathering of medical doctors and give lectures on medical topics. The field has its own modes of consecration. I might, of course, claim to have powers of healing and tell everyone that I have a magical oil mixed with garbled Latin in it. But then that talent is probably not the kind that the medical field requires.”
I agree with Bagulaya. Moreover, a mafia’s field of production involves lots of money. The only substantial income I got from writing didn’t come from my poems, essays and fiction in the Philippines, but from textbooks. That, plus my royalty from my books published overseas.
Finally, I was also the head of the jury for the recent Palanca Awards for the Short Story. We didn’t know the winners until the awarding ceremony — and we were glad to know they were new writers, bringing a whiff of fresh air to the field.
Danton Remoto’s books include “Boys’ Love,” “Riverrun” and “The Heart of Summer” published by Penguin SEA. They are on sale at Fully Booked, National Bookstore and www.acrephils.com.
