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As an employer, do you know that your obligation goes beyond remitting your employees’ (plus the employer’s) statutory contributions to various government agencies, such as the Social Security System (SSS), Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) and Home Development and Mutual Fund (HDMF)?

With this year’s promising growth in our GDP, the Philippines has been dubbed the fastest-growing economy among Asian nations. We can achieve more if we are able to continuously improve on areas that are critical to growing the economy. The difficulty of doing business has been our long standing problem. Although the Philippines moved up to no. 99 from no. 103 last year in World Bank’s “doing business” ranking, the Philippines dropped from number 165 to number 171 in the category of starting a business. Outdated procedures and “red tape” remain the biggest obstacles towards improving doing business. From setting-up, to complying with local rules and regulations, even dissolution of a business is a lengthy and complicated process. Many procedural reforms claim to have reduced the number of days to secure certificates, licenses, and permits. Yet in reality, it still takes at least one to as long as three months to fully register in all government agencies.

These past few days have been nerve-wracking because so much had happened, both locally and in the international scene. I am quite certain that majority of us took to our social media to air out our opinions on the various current events and the hashtag #mytwocents was often used for these. More of that, one of the current developments that I am most concerned about is the tax reform agenda primarily because I am one of the many taxpayers who will be affected by it. Every pay slip, taxes seem to extract a huge cut from our earnings and they take quite a burden especially for those who do not see their taxes working for them.

Likemost persons, my interest is piqued by any sort of lists or rankings, from NBA’s all-time greatest to Billboard’s Top 100. Thus, when I recently came across the latest Harvard Business Review’s (HBR) list of best-performing CEOs,I really had to take a look.

THE PHILIPPINES, a nation of a little over 100 million people and growing relatively fast, has been afflicted by widespread poverty for a long, long time now. When this article was being written, poverty incidence was estimated by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) to be at 26.3% of total population in the first semester of 2015. As it turned out, the final rate for 2015 as released by PSA recently is 21.6%, a very surprising significant drop in six months.

A combination of complex regulatory environments and dynamic, competitive markets means that the challenges firms need to hurdle to compete and flourish have arguably never been this daunting. According to Nick Jeffrey, director for public policy at Grant Thornton, “if Boards are not looking ahead, through the right lenses, the risk is they will only spot these issues when they are right in front of them—which may be too late.”

One week from now, we commemorate All Souls Day. Many of us will visit the cemetery to remember departed loved ones. For some, this occasion is a reminder that, after all the toils and struggles in life, our physical bodies will be laid to rest in the same place. Then, what happens? Aside from the spiritual and religious aspects of death, there is another aspect which we might not be able to avoid -- tax. In particular, upon death, our estate could be subject to estate tax. Others call it the death tax. Is this applicable only to rich people?

Asia Pacific is the engine room of the global economy. GDP growth across the region outstrips the West; while the vast majority of European and North American economies are forecast to grow by less than 2% in 2016, many of those in Asia Pacific are looking for at least 3% growth and in some cases more. And while the Chinese economy cools, increasing economic co-operation between its neighbours has the potential to offset this.