Acting Cebu City Treasurer Jerone Castillo | CDND File Photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Cebu City Treasurer’s Office (CTO) is targeting a P9 billion tax collection this year, which is a billion more than its 2019 revenue.
Lawyer Jerone Castillo, who is also the acting city treasurer, said they plan to generate the P1 billion additional revenue by also increasing their real property tax (RPT) collection target for the year.
CTO collected P1.4 billion in RPT in 2019.
Read: Cebu City exceeds 2019 tax collection target
Castillo said that increasing the city’s RPT target does not necessarily mean increasing the basic tax rate. They only needed to educate property owners on their need to settle their tax dues to avoid payment of interests and other penalties.
“Ang pagbayad sa (payment of) real property is incumbent upon the taxpayer base on the Local Government Code. They need to pay taxes for their land, building, and machinery,” said Castillo.
The City Assessor’s Office earlier raised a concern on the failure of companies to declare newly acquired machines for RPT assessment.
Castillo said they see the need to create a tax map that is equipped with digital geographic tagging so that establishments that were previously assessed will already have digital records on their location and payables. Said records will also include the actual RPT for their land, structures, and machinery.
While he admits that what they plan to do is a huge undertaking, Castillo said they will have this tested in Barangays Banilad and Guadalupe. They hope to complete geotagging within the year.
Aside from implementing tax mapping, CTO is also waiting for the City Council to pass a draft ordinance that will allow the grant of amnesty on businesses that were earlier found to have violated the city’s tax ordinance.
The passage of the legislation will allow the reduction of accumulated fines and penalties to only 20 percent of the basic tax.
Castillo said that the grant of amnesty is expected to encourage businesses to already settle their delinquencies and to continue to operate here.
“If we give this (amnesty) to our establishments, they will be able to pay their taxes and they would want to continue to do business in Cebu City, in turn, more tax collection for us,” he said.
Castillo expressed confidence that intensified tax collection will help CTO reach their P9 billion revenue target for 2020.
“We don’t need to increase the rates of our taxes, we only need to collect the existing taxes properly,” he said. / dcb