By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

SENATORS are seeking to reduce the number of businesses exempted from paying the gross receipt tax by amending the Dave Santos Act, which grants exemption to companies that make an income of less than $50,000 a year.
The amendment proposed by Sen. Frank Blas Jr., R-Barrigada, lowers the threshold for GRT exemption under the Dave Santos Act to $40,000. The Department of Revenue and Taxation earlier said the government is losing $30 million a year due to the exemptions.
The Legislature has agreed to incorporate Blas’s amendment into Bill 74, the administration’s 2007 revised budget proposal.
Another major amendment that reached the floor yesterday was one proposed by Sen. Rory Respicio, D-Agana Heights, who sought to cancel the governor’s authority to transfer funds into any government agency that has violated the reporting requirements.
Under the budget law, agencies that fail to comply with the reporting requirement are to be deappropriated 5 percent of the funding allotted to them.
Respicio disagreed with the administration’s penchant for forgiving such delinquent agencies.
One such agency is the Guam Public School System, but education superintendent Luis Reyes is asking the senators to restore the 5 percent deappropriation.
“I find it interesting that the administration’s representative testified to the Legislature that they would take a 5 percent cut over a 15 percent cut and it was not until they received notice of my amendment that they are now expressing concern that this law would have an impact on departments and agencies,” Respicio said.