THE country’s biggest mall operator wants the Quezon City government to hasten the enforcement of a national law reducing the amusement tax to 10 percent of gross receipts.

In a letter to Vice Mayor Herbert Bautista, SM Prime Holdings said the measure amending the Local Government Code for certain impositions on the entertainment industry-has lapsed into law on May 21,2009, and took effect Aug. 25.

‘We respectfully request the City Council to enact an amendatory ordinance,’ wrote Cecille Patricio, SM Prime vice president-corporate tax division.

The holding firm operates Centerpoint and Cubao malls in Quezon City along with SM North Edsa and SM Fairview, both hosting cinemas and other amusement centers.

Under Republic Act 9640, a local government may collect an amusement tax from ‘proprietors, lessees or operators of theaters, cinemas, concert halls, circuses, boxing stadia, arid other places of amusement at a rate of not more than 10 percent of the gross receipts from admission fees.’

But the same law, according to Patricio, allows a provincial or city to ‘prescribe the time, manner, terms and conditions for the payment of tax’ of 30 percent on gross receipts.

The new law consolidated House Bill 5624 (passed Feb. 25, 2009) and Senate Bill 2325 (passed June 11,2008) of Senator Ramon Revilla Jr.

Buhay party-list Rep. Irwin Tieng said the tax cut was needed to save the moribund movie business,noting that the sector was the ‘most heavily-taxed industry in the country’ amid theaters in the provinces closing down also , because of film piracy.

Echoing the concerns of Revilla in the upper chamber, Tieng said the burdensome tax had forced production companies to fold up, resulting in a drastic drop in the number of movies from Filipino fil makers.

He said about 200 titles a year were churned out in the 1990s, against 30 at the turn of the century.

Before RA 9640’s approval, not only was the film sector shouldering the 30-percent amusement tax,it was also bogged down by a 12-percent value-added tax on imported film-making raw materials and equipment; 35-percent corporate income tax, and a 5-percent withholding tax on producer’s film share.