City tax mapping to start Monday

CEBU, Philippines - Starting Monday next week, 24 personnel from the Cebu City Assessor’s Office will be conducting tax mapping operations to find out if all real property owners are paying the correct amount of taxes.

Cebu City Administrator Jose Marie Poblete approved the recommendation of City Assessor Eustaquio B. Cesa for the creation of two teams who will do the tax mapping with 12 persons per team in order to update the records of real property owners in the city.

Real Properties are the lands, houses or buildings and the machineries.

Poblete believes that tax mapping will increase the revenue collections from real properties because several of the real property units are still reflected as residential in their records but these have actually been converted into commercial units.

He said several residential house or residential lots have been used by their owners for commercial purposes without informing the city so they will continue paying lower tax rates.

“Gamay man ang tax rate sa residential compared sa commercial. Ang ubang mga yuta nga narehistro nga residential gipaabangan na diay og gasoline station apan ang iyang buhis gibasi gihapon sa residential,” Poblete said.

City Treasurer Emma Villarete said the city’s overall revenue collections from the real property taxes last year had reached P614 million, but the amount left for the city’s general fund was only P303 million.

This is because one percent of the gross collection is for the Special Education Fund and another one percent is for the share of the barangays where the establishments are located. —(FREEMAN)