By Ken Berger

The following article appeared in a Philippine newspaper, entitled the Express (Year I, Volume II, Manila, Thursday, October 18, 1945, No. 14, pp. 1 & 4).

The headline read:

VALIDITY OF JAP NOTES IN PANGASINAN UPHELD
For Taxes Paid One Week Before Yank Occupation

Payment in Japanese "Mickey Mouse" money of the real property taxes
in some municipalities of Pangasinan from January 1, this year up to the occupation thereof by the liberating forces (Americans) are valid, the
Department of Justice rules in a recent opinion requested by the Secretary of Finance.

Pangasinan tax payers, according to the basic communication, hearing
that the Americans were about to land, or that they had actually landed, "took advantage of using their Japanese notes for the payment of their taxes for the current year." The Department held that the phrase cannot alter the law governing the payment of said taxes.

Citing section 21 of Commonwealth Act No. 470, the Japanese Military
Administration enforcement of tax laws of the Commonwealth, Instruction 37 of the Director General of the JMA, and international law, the Justice secretary holds that the government established by the Japanese army of occupation had the power to collect the real property tax provided for in the Assessment Law. "The military government in occupied or conquered territory has authority to promulgate laws and regulations for the collection of revenue, and may collect taxes and duties, for the support of military
operation and of the government," runs 67 Corpus Juris, 423.

Valid payment of taxes in "Mickey Mouse" is upheld by 61 C. J. 963,
26 R. C. L. Sec. 335, p. 376 which says that "the legislature has the power to prescribe the kind of funds in which taxes shall be payable. It may declare that only gold and silver coin shall be receivable for this purpose, and in such cases the United States treasury notes are not legal tender in payment of taxes, although there is contrary authority. But in the absence of such restriction, taxes may be paid in any lawful current money, although the collector has no authority to accept anything else unless specially allowed by law."

Executive Order No. 25 by the President of the Philippines dated
November 18, 1944, decreed the New Victory Series of Philippine Treasury Certificates and the coins identical to pre-war issue then in circulation as legal tender, and prohibited transaction in Japanese currency. But then the same decree provides that it was only application to "all areas free from enemy occupation and control throughout the Philippines."

Hence the Department rules "The real property taxes in question having been paid in municipalities not free from enemy occupation, although in Japanese military notes, were, therefore, paid in lawful current money."