YOUR ₱500 NEEDS A RECEIPT. THEIR BILLIONS?

I recently filed my quarterly tax return. Looking at how much of my hard-earned money went to taxes hurt.

I could already picture the extra groceries. The money toward a household worker’s salary. Everyday expenses that do not disappear just because tax season arrives.

I paid. But I wanted an answer: where, exactly, would that money go?

I want to help fund schools, hospitals, roads and public services. What frustrates me is having to account for what I earn, then struggle to follow what happens after I hand part of it over.

Millions of Filipinos make that same contribution. Why should getting a clear explanation feel like asking for a favor?

Give someone ₱500 to buy something and you expect the change and the receipt. If the amount is wrong, you ask. If the explanation is vague, you ask again.

You do not need to be an accountant. It is your money.

Why should that confidence disappear once the money reaches government?

The language becomes technical. The figures become enormous. We are told these matters are best left to those who understand them.

We begin to wonder whether we know enough to ask.

Perhaps those handling the money should wonder whether they have explained enough to deserve our trust.

On October 20, the Supreme Court announced its ruling against Congress’s ₱449.5-billion increase in unprogrammed appropriations in the 2024 budget. The proposed ₱281.9 billion had grown to approximately ₱731.4 billion.

That ₱449.5 billion was the increase in standby spending authority—not the entire national budget, and not a finding that the whole amount had been spent or stolen. Establishing what was released, spent and properly accounted for requires further records.

Precision matters. We cannot demand honest answers while being careless with the accusation.

But being careful should make our questions better. It should not make them disappear.

Unprogrammed appropriations allow spending once specified funding conditions are met. At home, the equivalent might be deciding what you can afford if additional money comes in.

You would still want to know what the money was for. You would still decide which expense came first.

The Court did not rule that such appropriations were inherently unconstitutional. It required safeguards and clear spending priorities, and emphasized transparency in bicameral proceedings.

When the money becomes available, who gets served first? Who decides? Where can we see why?

The bicameral conference committee is where the House and Senate reconcile their budget versions. That explanation tells us what the committee does. It does not explain a particular increase.

Who proposed it? What justification was given? Who approved it?

These are questions about decisions made with public money. Citizens should not have to establish a politician’s guilt before being entitled to an explanation.

Yet how often do we hear a demand for records treated as an accusation—and an accusation treated as a reason to stop answering?

After years of asking questions for a living, I still find this infuriating: an inadequate answer can somehow become the questioner’s failure to understand.

If the public cannot follow the explanation, those giving it have work to do. Taxpayers have already done theirs.

Take SAGIP—Strengthening Assistance for Government Infrastructure and Social Programs. The Court identified higher allocations for SAGIP as part of the disputed ₱449.5-billion increase.

The name tells us what the money is meant to support. It does not tell us which projects, whose communities, or why they came first.

You can want a road built and still ask how it was chosen. You can support assistance for struggling families and still demand to know how beneficiaries were selected.

The people meant to benefit have the strongest reason to ask. They bear the cost when a worthy promise produces little they can actually use.

PhilHealth gives that concern a human face. In a separate December 2025 ruling, the Supreme Court ordered the return of ₱60 billion transferred to the Treasury and barred the transfer of the remaining ₱29.9 billion.

For a family worried about a hospital bill, the next question is hardly academic: was the money restored as ordered, and what does it mean for their coverage?

We should keep asking after the ruling stops making headlines. Especially then.

There is something troubling about expecting a patient to master public finance before asking about money intended for health care.

Or a parent to understand budget classifications before asking why a school still lacks classrooms.

Expertise is necessary to prepare a budget, scrutinize its legality and audit its use. It should help answer those questions. It should never become an entrance requirement for asking them.

Publishing a document is a start. Can an ordinary reader follow a particular allocation from the decision to approve it to the service it paid for? If that trail requires missing records, unexplained changes or somebody willing to translate every page, the obligation to explain remains unfinished.

How many more qualifications do we need before somebody gives us a straight answer?

Government does need flexibility. Emergencies do not wait for perfect paperwork, and useful projects should not be paralyzed by suspicion.

But flexibility still needs boundaries. Otherwise, the public is being asked to trust decisions it cannot examine—and to accept the consequences if that trust proves misplaced.

When I filed my tax return, I knew what that money could have paid for at home. Groceries. Part of a household worker’s salary. Expenses I would now have to cover with what remained.

I paid because contributing to public services is my responsibility.

Accounting for that contribution is government’s responsibility.

Why does paying my share come with a deadline, while explaining what happened to it so often requires a court case?