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LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 25 November 2007 Issue

Occupation refers to the principal activity that a person does during his lifetime to earn a living. And occupation is normally left to the individual’s own choosing.

To earn a living, an individual could opt either to accept employment, to be engaged in some profession, to be an entrepreneur, or to be an investor.

Employment means having to be in the service of another person or entity called the employer that directs and controls the material details of the work to be performed. The arrangement between the employer and the employee is always defined or even limited by a contract, whether express or implied, that is usually subject to some minimum standards imposed by laws under the theory that the state must afford appropriate protection to labor. The employee is paid for the services rendered in expectation of his or her contribution to the employer’s productivity, generally driven by the employer’s motivation to realize a profit.

A profession, on the other hand, arises when a specialized field of human activity transforms itself as an occupation through merit and fitness obtained through a formal education and normally after passing state-sponsored qualifying examinations. The practice of most professions is regulated by the government and the professionals are bound by some rules or norms of ethical standards.

The entrepreneur, a word first defined by an 18th-century Irish economic theorist, Richard Cantillon, is a person who assumes the inherent risks of initiating and operating a new enterprise or venture as an occupation by mobilizing the factors of production of land, labor and/or capital also for the purpose of making profits. The entrepreneur is the business owner.

An investor is someone who commits capital in order to gain financial returns. Treating investment as an occupation means making money out of existing monies and resources most often out of passive income like interest, rent, royalties, dividends or some forms of speculative gains.

Typically, a person’s occupation starts with employment. Many would end up in this state until retirement day. If monies were saved or some assets were acquired out of employment, they could be used to change their occupation or start another one either as an entrepreneur or an investor or both. Without such assets though, the person is bound to live either a life of misery or dependency until his retirement from this world. Some gifted employees may also climb up the apex of the corporate ladder and be an entrepreneur in their own right using other people’s money and resources.

Many people would choose the path of spending more years of study to possess a bona fide standing in a regulated profession. Most starting out professionals would begin their career as an employee, often justified by the sense of a lack of experience, while the gutsy others would rather embark immediately on entrepreneurship as a mode of carrying out their vocation. Success in a professional career also provides the professional the opportunity to become an investor.

Entrepreneurship is a good option because it permits people to exclusively enjoy the profits arising from the value of their own hard work. Simply stated entrepreneurship is self-employment, and that means being an employer and employee at the same time. Every successful entrepreneur eventually becomes an investor.

Obviously, the most comfortable and ideal of these occupations is to become an investor. And this is simply because investors make their own money and resources work for them with least human effort and risk. But to be one, the individual needs to muster a good amount of resources from employment, from the practice of profession or from entrepreneurship. The only exception perhaps would be those who were born in a silver platter or those who got married to someone with a silver spoon. Otherwise, to attain the station of an investor necessitates hard work.

In the scheme of things though, each of these occupations provides the dynamic engine to complete the economic cycle of society.

At the end of the day, every person despite their occupational beginnings should strive to become an investor as a reward for a lifetime of hard work.

THAT business entities or enterprises registered as ”Barangay Micro Business Enterprise”, or BMBE, under the “Barangay Micro Business Enterprises Act of 2002” (R. A. 9178 - approved: 13 November 2002) are entitled to the following incentives: (a) tax exempt from income arising from operations [Sec. 7]; (b) exemption from the payment of minimum wage [Sec. 8]; and (c) special credit window from some government financial institutions [Sec. 9].

To qualify as BMBE, the company must be engaged in the production, processing or manufacturing of products or commodities, including agro-processing, trading and services, and its total asset, including those arising from loans but exclusive of the land on which the particular business entity’s office, plant and equipment are situated, is not be more than Three Million Pesos (P3,000,000.00) [Sec. 3 (a)].

Food outlets, restaurants, and stores are required by the “An Act for Salt Iodization Nationwde (ASIN) Law” (R. A. 8172 - approved: 20 December 1995) to make available to customers only iodized salt in their establishment [Sec. 5 (c)]. A violation is punishable by a fine of not less than P1,000 nor more than P100,000, including a possible revocation of business permits and/or ban of its product from the market [Sec. 9].