City Treasurer Tessie Camarillo outlines City Hall’s tax revenue plan for next year during the council’s budget hearing.
(CDN Photo/Junjie Mendoza)
Cebu City residents and businesses can pay their taxes online by the fourth quarter of next year if the City Treasurer’s Office (CTO) can make good on their promise to do so.
“This will be a hassle-free form of payment for taxpayers, and this will also help decongest our taxpayers lounge,” City Treasurer Tessie Camarillo told the City Council in yesterday’s public hearing.
Camarillo said they still need to do benchmarking by May next year then do preparations and documentation by June.
They also need an ordinance to be passed for the program by the third quarter of next year.
Councilor Raymond Garcia, vice chairperson of the Committee on Budget and Finance, welcomed the proposal.
“We will support this especially since we are trying to make things easier for our taxpayers. It will be good for our taxpayers who are our customers in the first place,” he said.
Aside from the online tax payment, the CTO also wants to fill up several vacant positions in their office in order to increase collection and augment the number of their bonded personnel.
Vacant positions in the CTO include 31 revenue collection clerks, 17 local treasury operations officers and 16 local revenue collection officers.
Camarillo said they intend to implement “task force tax declaration” next year which aims to increase real property units and tax base in the city.
“There is a need to increase our tax base because our appropriation is increasing. Our present tax base cannot cope with mandatory requirements. That’s why we have to implement this program. That way, we can increase our tax base and increase tax collection,” she said.
In order to do this, she said they need to conduct physical validation of real properties in the city.
The CTO will conduct the validation together with the City Assessor’s Office under the direct supervision of the Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF).
She said the BLGF started orientation of the core group on the appraisal of the real properties this month.