It is already bad enough that fixed-income earners are the most ruthlessly taxed individuals.

Before they could even peek into their pay envelopes, the government had already gotten its share of their incomes in terms of withholding taxes.

We know, we know: All income is taxable, and it is every citizen’s obligation to pay the proper taxes. Paying them is truly a patriot act.

But giving them the aggravation of having to disclose details of their personal finances is engaging in fiscal sado-masochism.

In fact, even big business organizations like the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Bankers Association of the Philippines, have opposed the mandatory reporting requirement.

And so thanks to the valiant efforts of our otherwise hardly working representatives in Congress, taxpayers will no longer be compelled to make a detailed income report starting next April as required under a Bureau of Internal Revenue  regulation.

Buckling under heavy pressure from members of the House committee on ways and means to scuttle the regulation, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima told the panel that he would issue a new rule to make the requirement optional.

“We would like to test the new (BIR) forms on income reporting, but detailed disclosure (of income and sources) will now be optional in response to the concerns raised by members of the committee,” Purisima was quoted by a major broadsheet as saying.

Under the controversial regulation, taxpayers would have to detail their income and its sources, including earnings subject to final tax such as interest income, dividends and royalties, and income realized from the sale of shares of stock and real estate.

The regulation presumes that taxpayers do not have what is called passive income if they leave the spaces in the forms for such earnings blank. They would be liable for prosecution for perjury and violation of the tax code if they make an inaccurate report.

During the hearing, Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez said the reporting requirement “violates our people’s right to privacy, which the Constitution guarantees”.

”Second, based on a taxpayer’s declaration of his interest income, one would be able to extrapolate the amount of his bank deposits. So that rule contravenes the bank secrecy law,” he said.

“Third, your detailed income report regulation will scare away local and foreign investors, which would be bad for the economy. So we appeal to you to scrap it as it is against the Constitution, against the law, and against the interest of our country,” he told Purisima.

The DoF chief said it was not his and BIR Commissioner Kim Henares’ intention to violate the Constitution and the law, and to make paying taxes more difficult for “compliant” taxpayers.

“We just want to make people pay the correct amount of taxes so the government can deliver better services. Our targets here are professionals and self-employed individuals who paid only an average of P5,600 in annual income tax, less than the tax paid by salaried workers,” he said.

Purisima said based on their measly income tax payment, professionals are making less than what ordinary employees earn, although most of the former wallow in luxury.

“If we can just make these people pay P100,000 more in income tax, which they can easily afford, we would be generating an additional P150 billion in revenues for social services,” he stressed.