The Paper Tax: The Economic Case for eNotarization in the Philippines
Nobody in the Philippines pays a line item called the paper tax, yet nearly everyone pays it: the trip to the notary, the courier, the day off work. eNotarization is the first real chance to cut it.
Count what it costs to notarize one document the old way. Print it, and print it again when a name is misspelled. Find a notary, often in an office near the city hall or the courts, and get there through traffic. Wait your turn. Sign, pay, and wait for the seal. If the other party lives in another province, courier the papers and wait days for them to come back, hoping nothing goes missing on the way. Then file the physical copy somewhere it can be found again.
Every person who has to sign pays some version of this, and so does every business that has to receive the result. None of it appears on the notary’s receipt. It shows up instead as lost workdays, missed deadlines, and transactions that never happen because the paperwork was too much trouble.
A cost multiplied across the economy
Notarization is not a rare event. More than 40 document types commonly require it in the Philippines: affidavits for a lost ID, special powers of attorney, deeds, loan and mortgage papers, corporate certificates, and more.
Property alone shows the scale. Land Registration Authority Administrator Atty. Gerardo P. Sirios has said the LRA safeguards more than 20 million land titles and supporting documents through more than 180 Registries of Deeds, and recorded roughly ₱11 billion in collections across more than 6 million transactions in a single year. Many of those transactions began with a notarized deed, mortgage, or power of attorney that somebody had to print, carry, and sign in person.
Why paper held on for so long
The law accepted electronic documents a long time ago. The Electronic Commerce Act (R.A. 8792) of 2000 recognized electronic documents and signatures and even contemplated electronic notarization. What kept notarization on paper was procedure. Under the 2004 Rules on Notarial Practice, a notary could act only within the territory of their commission, and personal appearance meant standing in front of the notary. A transaction could be digital from end to end except for the one step that made it legally solid, and that step pulled everything back to paper.
Atty. Third Bagro, Twala’s co-founder and general counsel, describes the result as a country that digitized the front end of its transactions and kept paper at the back: the loan application goes online, and the mortgage still waits for a wet signature.
The cost was not only domestic. A 2022 United Nations study, cited by Atty. Bagro in Making eNotarization Possible, counted the lack of rules on electronic notarization among the remaining legal impediments to paperless trade.
What changes when the notary can be anywhere
The Supreme Court’s Rules on Electronic Notarization (A.M. No. 24-10-14-SC), in effect since March 2025 and in public use since the official launch on October 19, 2026, remove both constraints. An Electronic Notary Public (ENP) can notarize for people anywhere in the Philippines, not just in the city of their commission. And under the Rules, appearing before the notary by videoconference is the equivalent of appearing in person.
Put the two together and the arithmetic changes. A seller in Davao and a buyer in Pasig can sign the same deed on one platform and appear before the same ENP in one session, with no courier and no flight. Heirs settling an estate from three provinces can appear together without anyone traveling. The owner of a small business in Naga can get a secretary’s certificate notarized between meetings. And because Twala is open 24/7, the work around the session (verifying your ID, booking, messaging the notary, paying, downloading) no longer has to fit inside office hours.
Twala’s own figures put the gains from moving document work onto its platform at 80% faster turnaround and 40% savings in time and materials per agreement. eNotarization extends those gains to the one step that used to send documents back to paper.
One notarized document, two ways
| What it takes | On paper | eNotarized on Twala |
|---|---|---|
| Where everyone must be | In front of the notary, within the notary’s territory | Anywhere in the Philippines, in one live video session or in person |
| Hours | The notary’s office hours | Twala is open 24/7; the session runs in your ENP’s open times |
| Printing | Every draft and every copy | None |
| Getting it to the other party | Courier or hand carry | The same PDF, available to every principal |
| Checking identity | The notary looks at your ID | National ID checked against the national registry, or a government-issued ID, plus a face scan |
| The record | A paper notarial register | An electronic notarial book, with the act uploaded to the Supreme Court’s Central Notarial Database |
| Checking it later | Compare the seal and signature by eye | Verify the PDF; any change shows as Document tampered |
Who gains the most
Large companies can absorb the paper tax. Smaller players can’t, and they pay it at the highest rate: the sari-sari store owner who closes for a day to get an affidavit notarized, the farmer two rides away from the nearest lawyer, the cooperative member applying for a loan. Senior Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen said it plainly at the launch: “Secure eNotarization removes geographical and physical barriers bringing legal protection to small players, safely and instantly.”
Legal aid follows the same logic. Under Twala’s agreement with the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, participating lawyers can give free online consultations to eligible beneficiaries, subject to the program’s intake and scheduling, and Twala provides free eNotarization credits for eligible indigent clients. For someone who could never afford the trip, let alone the fee, that is the difference between finishing a document and giving up on it. Read more about the IBP and Twala legal aid program.
The cost nobody counts
Paper carries one more charge that rarely makes it into the arithmetic: fraud. The Supreme Court has recognized how easily third parties can fake notarial seals and stamps (see our note on that ruling), and every forged deed or affidavit costs someone a property, a loan, or years in court. An eNotarized document on Twala is sealed with a digital signature and anchored on a blockchain with HashOrigin™ technology, so any change after notarization shows the moment the file is verified.
The catch is on the receiving end
Every peso of savings depends on one thing: the bank, agency, school, or company on the receiving end accepting the eNotarized PDF as it is. If an office insists on a printout, the paper tax comes back with an extra step added. Atty. Bagro has warned about exactly this in The Last Mile of Digitalization.
There is movement. On October 13, 2026, the Supreme Court signed joint memorandum circulars with the Land Registration Authority and the Securities and Exchange Commission on using and accepting electronically notarized documents, so the land registry and the corporate regulator now have guidelines for them. Other offices have to follow.
Atty. Bagro’s prescription at the October 19 launch was blunt: “With the legal framework and accredited technology now available, there is no more excuse for keeping transactions on paper when they can be completed digitally. Agencies and businesses must update their procedures so that electronic notarization translates into fewer queues, fewer trips, and lower costs for citizens and businesses.”
Government is keeping score the same way. “The success of electronic notarization is not measured by how many transactions we move online but how many lives we make easier,” Department of Information and Communications Technology Secretary Robert Joseph de Claro said at the launch. “How much closer it brought services to the people.” For offices ready to make the change, we have written a practical guide on how government offices can accept and verify eNotarized documents.
The paper tax was never written into any law, so no law has to be passed to repeal it. It ends one checklist, one office, and one transaction at a time. To see what that looks like for a single document, start with our complete guide to eNotarization in the Philippines, or see how eNotary on Twala works.
