Mike against real property tax hike

CEBU, Philippines - Mayor Michael Rama is against the proposal of the Cebu City Assessor’s Office to increase tax rates for real properties next year in order to raise revenue collections of the city as this would financially affect most of his constituents.

What the mayor wants to implement is the adjustment of taxes if there are changes in the actual use of the properties.

This means that if a property was registered as residential but has been used for commercial purposes, the owner must be paying the tax rates for commercial properties.

Assistant City Assessor Liezl Gonzaga admitted that based on the results of the tax mapping that they conducted from January to June 30 of this year, they have discovered 686 real property units (RPUs) that were listed as residential but are now being used for commercial purposes.

“Daku man ang bayranan nga buhis kun ang property gamiton na sa commercial,” said Gonzaga.

Aside from the change of actual use of the properties, the tax mapping teams also discovered that there were 54 RPUs with additional improvements like adding more floors to a building.

The city is expected to earn P100.2 million from the 831 RPUs that were tax mapped by the 24-member teams.

These properties were assessed to have a value of at least P3.341 billion.

City Assessor Eustaquio Cesa said the last general revision of real property tax rates in Cebu City was in 2006  and the law allows general revision of tax rates of real properties every three years.

Section 218 of Republic Act 7160 or the Local Government Code provides that the assessment levels to be applied to the fair market value of real property to determine its assessed value shall be fixed by ordinances of the City Council, although there is a limitation of the rate.  (FREEMAN)