Gabriela protested at Commonwealth Market in Quezon City on February 13 to demand the junking of the 12% value-added tax (VAT) and to denounce the rampant corruption in the country. The action was part of the weekly “Black Friday Protest” against corruption that began in September 2025.

In the protest, they launched the campaign “Abolish VAT, Hold the Corrupt Accountable” as part of the upcoming International Working Women’s Day on March 8. The group concurrently began a signature campaign calling for the removal of VAT on goods and services, aiming to gather 12,000 signatures.

According to Gabriela, the 12% VAT is the heaviest burden on the Filipino people. VAT punishes every Filipino, especially mothers who struggle to stretch meager wages that fall below the living standard.

They said the call to scrap VAT reemerged amid widespread public outrage over corruption scandals involving billions of pesos in ghost projects and misuse of flood control funds.

“Paying VAT for a can of sardines or a liter of cooking oil gravely insults every Filipino taxpayer who witness losing billions of public funds on substandard and ghost projects,” Gabriela secretary general Clarice Palce said. “Mandating poor families to finance the national budget that is continuously drained by systematic corruption has no economic nor moral justification.”

The group urged the people to express their outrage over government corruption in the national protests on February 25, the 40th anniversary of EDSA, and on March 8, International Women’s Day.

“It is time we fight for a tax system that serves the interests of the majority, not the greed of the few,” Palce concluded.