Monday, 5 May 2008

Travel Tax Exemption Philippines


It is an undesirable task to pay the 1670,- Peso of Traveltax for Filipinos, every time they leave their country, no matter if for a short holiday or for going home to their second home country abroad when they are married with a foreigner.
The Traveltax was originally thought to have a budget available for Filipino Oversea Workers, to bring them back home in case of an emergency or what ever. Few years ago however, when there was some trouble in the Middle East and a group of some hundred Filipinos had to be evacuated, all this money that was collected over the years was gone, disappeared in some "unknown black holes". The government had no money available to bring home their fellow citizens.

However, it seems that a lot of people, Filipinos as well as foreigners who are married to a Filipina , don't know that there is an exemption for this Traveltax, for all Filipinos who have a permanent residence permit in any foreign country. To be exempted from the Traveltax, you have to go to the office of the "Philippine Tourism Authority", pay a fee of 200,- Peso and you will be exempted. Papers needed are the passport with the permanent foreign Visa in it and the airline ticket.
I don't know where all this offices are in Manila, Davao or Angeles (cities with int. airports), in Cebu it is located just beside Pier 1 (Ocean Jet) in a park.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

thats no blackhole...its called corruption

richel said...

Nice for you to post this. This is a valuable information for my fellow Filipino citizen. Now, at least, they know what to do to be exempted.Thanks again. richel www.philippinesdailyphotos.com

Dan Mihaliak said...

Wow i did not know about this. I transit from NAIA every six months. I'm going to check on this!

kit said...

Taxing Balikbayans means preventing their dollars to be spent in the Philippines. Exempting is a motivation for Filipinos to park their dollars in Philippine investments.