Duterte signs Philippine tax bill into law to help businesses recover

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. - AP

MANILA (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN): A day before it was set to lapse into law, President Rodrigo Duterte signed the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act, or CREATE, which cuts corporate income taxes and provides incentives to help businesses recover from the pandemic and encourage foreign investments.

But Duterte vetoed several provisions that would have limited the power of the Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB) and would have given the President the power to exempt any investment promotion agency from reform, saying the latter could become a “highly political tool.”