CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu City government could have realized an additional income of P848.7 million from the real property tax, if it has intensified its collection from tax delinquents.
This observation was incorporated in the Audit Observation Memorandum (AOM) dated February 19 that State Auditor IV Lita Lamparas and State Auditor V Maria Daisy Bercede had signed.
“We recommend that the City Treasurer’s Office monitor and intensify collection of the delinquent real property taxes (RPT). Likewise, request the assistance of the barangays where real property units are situated for the immediate release of demand letters and collection thereof,” read a portion of the AOM.
In her response, Acting City Treasurer Arlene Rentuza said the office has implemented several strategies to intensify its collection of the delinquent RPT.
One of which is the hiring of job order employees to continuously deliver and serve notice of delinquencies, she said.
“We have fully implemented for the year 2018 the Amnesty on Real Property to give our taxpayers the chance to settle their delinquencies,” she said.
Rentuza said her office has also published the list of delinquent and unsettled delinquent properties to give them the chance for settlement.
She added her office is in the process of generating the list of delinquent real properties and work with the barangay officials to assist them in informing their concerned constituents on updating their RPT payments.
“We are also on the stage of migrating our real property taxes to the new RPT system that has an updated feature such as allowing the office of the treasurer to easily generate list of real property status of every properties,” she added.
In the AOM, COA said the city could have realized additional income of P848,711,178.35 had receivables from RPT/ Special Education Tax (SET) on real properties as of May 2018.
The commission also noted that there was no RPT/SET receivable set up for 2018.
At least 41 locations in Cebu City have number of declarants who have not paid the city government for the RPTs, as of May 2018.
The most number of declarants is in Barangay Guadalupe with 1,379 declarants amounting to P123 million, followed by Barangay Talamban with 679 declarants amounting to P79 million in delinquency.
The COA said the collection of the income could have augmented the city’s appropriation for basic services for its constituents. — GAN (FREEMAN)