Answer
Falsification of a public, official, or commercial document is punished more severely because such documents carry a presumption of regularity and public faith. Under Article 172 of the Revised Penal Code, a private individual who falsifies a public, official, or commercial document (or a public officer who does so without taking advantage of his position) is liable, and no proof of damage or intent to cause damage is required — the undermining of public faith itself is the injury.
Falsification of a private document, by contrast, requires that the offender caused damage to a third party or at least acted with intent to cause such damage. This element of damage is the distinguishing feature: harm to a private interest must be shown for private-document falsification, whereas for public or commercial documents the violation of public faith is enough. The penalties and elements are set out in Articles 171 and 172.
Researching Philippine law? Intellegal brings Philippine case-law search, statute and issuance exploration, multi-dimension case comparison, document visualization, and cited deep-research reports into a single workflow — with every citation traced back to its original source, so you can verify each answer rather than take it on trust. Every authority it surfaces links back to its original provision or decision, so you can open the source and confirm the wording yourself, and save or export the questions and reports you reference most. See the full report for the statutes and cases behind this answer, or explore the related questions below.