Short answer. Yes, and on top of the ordinary deduction. Article 71 grants an enterprise organising an apprenticeship programme an additional deduction from taxable income of one-half of its labour training expenses for apprentices — but only where three conditions written into the same sentence are satisfied.
What the law says
An additional deduction from taxable income of one-half (1/2) of the value of labor training expenses incurred for developing the productivity and efficiency of apprentices shall be granted to the person or enterprise organizing an apprenticeship program
Labor Code, Article 71 — Deductibility Of Training Costs. Read the full provision →
What the incentive actually is
The grant is of an additional deduction from taxable income of one-half (1/2) of the value of labor training expenses incurred for developing the productivity and efficiency of apprentices. The word carrying the benefit is additional. This is not permission to treat training costs as an expense — a business expense is deductible anyway. It is a further half of that value, deducted again, as an incentive for running the programme. It also attaches to the person or enterprise organising the apprenticeship programme, so the party claiming it should be the party actually running the training.
The programme has to be recognised
The first proviso is that the programme be duly recognised by the Department of Labor and Employment. That is a threshold rather than a detail. A company that trains apprentices well, keeps proper records and pays them properly still has no claim under this article if the programme itself was never recognised, because recognition is what the article conditions the grant on. It is worth settling before the training year begins rather than at the point of filing, when the expense has already been incurred and the condition can no longer be met retrospectively.
Two limits on the amount
The second proviso caps the deduction: it shall not exceed ten percent of direct labor wage. So the incentive is bounded by the size of your wage bill, not by how much you chose to spend on training, and a heavy investment in a small workforce will run into the ceiling. The third proviso is a condition on conduct rather than arithmetic — the enterprise wishing to avail of the incentive should pay its apprentices the minimum wage. All three provisos sit in one sentence and operate together; missing any of them defeats the claim.
What this article does not settle
Article 71 creates the entitlement and states its conditions. It does not govern how the deduction is claimed, substantiated or examined — that belongs to tax law and to the revenue authorities, and this provision should not be read as answering those questions. What it tells you to prepare is the evidence the conditions were met: the document recognising the programme, the apprenticeship agreements, the payroll showing what apprentices were paid, and a costing of the training expenses that can be set against direct labour wage. Take that package to your tax adviser, not this article alone.