Friday, March 5, 2010

Status: Unemployed

Do you know where the government get the data for the unemployment rate?  I personally don't know.  I tried the National Statistics Office website and it didn't say anything about how the data was gathered.  It just came to me today, while I was in a meeting, and somebody reminded everyone about the Community Tax certificate (CTC)


Yearly, we are required to file our BIR forms with our Community Tax certificate (CTC) issued by the local government's office of Lapu Lapu.  Filing for the CTC isn't a problem at all, especially when I was a student and looking for a job since it was cheap, less than 30 pesos some 7 years ago.  But it becomes more expensive if you have an above minimum-wage salary.  A peso for every thousand pesos in a year's salary equivalent.  For example, if you earn 20,000 a month, that's 240,000 a year, divided by 1,000 is 240 pesos.  240 Pesos for a community tax certificate, and for more than 5 years of honestly paying the CTC and my taxes, I haven't seen a good thing happen in my city.  Where I live, has never changed a bit for the better in the last 5 years.  What's new? red fancy lamp posts.  Prices are going up so as the crime rate.  Where'd all those money went?

A number of people no longer feel obligated to declare their true gross salary in filing for the CTC.  When asked, they just say they are unemployed.  What if the unemployment rate statistics was based on the number of unemployed status?  Do you think we might just be better off with what the statistics show?

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