Real property tax hike eyed

CEBU, Philippines - Here’s some bad news for those who owns lands, buildings and machinery in Cebu City.

City assessor Eustaquio Cesa said he will recommend to the Cebu City Council that the existing real property tax rate will be increased by 20 percent, meaning if a taxpayer is presently paying P1,000 in real property tax every year he or she will have to pay an additional P200.

Cesa said the law allows the local government units to make revisions of its tax rates every three years and the last time Cebu City made amendments to its real property taxes was in 2006 or almost five years ago.

The officials of the Bureau of Local Government-Finance recently announced that most of the local government units had a “regretful situation” in the collection of real property taxes.

Among the reasons that the LGU’s revenue collections is below par, or just 65 percent of the total assessed value, is that the tax assessments are not reflected in current values, poor collections, lack of political will to enforce the collections and the failure to mobilize and manage land resources.

Assistant city assessor Liezel Gonzaga said the total number of real property units in Cebu City increased to 218,010 as of last year compared to only 207,979 in 2009. She, however, failed to give the amount of the collected real property taxes for that period.

According to the statistics of the BLGF real property taxes remain the stable source of income of the local government units, followed by business taxes and then the other revenue matters.

Meanwhile, Gonzaga also said their office is now working for the digitization of their records so real property owners can easily avail of copies of their tax declarations and other related documents once it will be completed by September of this year.

While they are also planning to make the documents available on the web, Gonzaga said it cannot be done this year.

But Gonzaga said once it will be realized the financial institutions will benefit from it, saying “Makatabang kini sa mga bangko nga dili na mailad sa mga fraud syndicates nga mogamit og mga mini nga land documents.” (FREEMAN NEWS)