consuming areas, and processed or manufactured goods (such as cooking oil) and condiments (such as vinegar, soy sauce, fish sauce, etc.) used for cooking are not VATexempt. Unless people are to eat rice, corn, fish, livestock and poultry in their originalor raw state, the VAT exemptions may not be sufficient to satisfy the requirement of "essential foodstuffs required to be free from hunger." Or take the right to adequate housing. Only rentals below PhP 10,000 a month and the sale of real property for low-cost or socialized housing are VAT-free; construction and other materials to maintain, repair or build houses are not exempt from VAT. The VAT exemptions may not be sufficient to satisfy the "basic shelter" requirement. Health Minimum Essential Levels of Human Rights vis-A-vis Value Added Ta:< Exemptions Minimum Essential Level VATExemptions Essential foodstuffs o Sale or importation of agricultural and marine food products in their required to be free from original state, livestock and poultry generally used as or yielding or hunger producing food for human consumption o Fertilizers, seeds, seedlings, fingerlings, fish, prawn, livestock and poultry feeds, including ingredients, whether locally produced or imported, used in the manufacture of finished feeds . Services rendered by agricultural contract growers and milling for others of palay into rice, corn into grits and sugar cane into raw sugar Educational services rendered by private educational institutions Most basic forms of education Medical, dental, hospital and veterinary services except those rendered by Essential primary health Housing care Basic shelter Food Education professionals . Lease of a residential unit with a monthly rental not exceeding P10,000 o Sale of real property utilized lor low-cost and socialized housing Finally, taxation should promote shared control over the country's financial resources. lt can do and accountability. so by fully incorporating the human rights principles of participation, transparency "A human rights-based taxation framework must make provision for mechanisms enabling both proactive and reactive participation by the public, before, during, and after the design and implementation of fiscal law and policy." (Bagenda,2011) This would require, among others, congressional hearings where people can actually participate in the public discourse. For participation to be meaningful and timely, mechanisms that ensure access to full and timely information on the design and implementation of tax law and policy are necessary. "As an illustration, a tax code with tax rates and exemptions that are not based on rational, objective and well-explained criteria violates the principle of transparency and is unlikely to command legitimacy." (Bagenda, 2011) Accountability mechanisms must be built-in alltax measures; these mechanisms should enable "any aggrieved party or member of the public to articulate their concerns regarding tax law and policy or its implementation in a manner that bears upon policymaking. Such accountability mechanisms must be both 'proactive'/preventative (enabling interested parties to being policymakers to account at the point of design) and 'reactive'/restitutionary (enabling justice after implementation, particularly through (quasi-) judicial means)." (Bagenda, 2011) 63