Revision of Baguio realty tax valuation pushed

By Aileen P. Refuerzo

BAGUIO CITY – The city assessor’s office is pushing for general revision of real property tax valuation in the city to upgrade this city’s aging schedule of fair market values of real properties.

City assessor Nilda Navarro said they are now working on a new schedule of market values effective 2015 in compliance with their mandate to undertake a general tax revision of real properties every three years as per provisions of the New Local Government Code or the Republic Act No. 7160.

She said the new schedule will be submitted to the Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF) before the end of the first semester. 

As a new procedure, the BLGF will be the one to submit the proposed revision to the city council for its consideration.Navarro said the assessor’s office has been given poor ratings by the BLGF due to the city government’s failure to implement the mandated adjustments every three years.

The last time the city implemented the revision was way back in 1996 and this was met by protests from taxpayers forcing the city government to instead impose the increase on a staggered basis spread out from 1997 to 1999.

In 2001, the city government adopted Tax Ordinance 2000-01 which imposed lower assessment levels for real properties that tempered the increase and eventually appeased the taxpayers.

Since then, the city has not implemented another revision due to humanitarian considerations.

In 2009, the assessor’s office submitted to the city council a new revision schedule but the same remained pending before council committee on ways and means cluster B and has now become obsolete as two revision terms have since elapsed.

In the said proposed schedule, the average increase in realty taxes was placed at 400 percent which is way above the 1996 levels considering the length of time that the city did not implement the adjustments.

Navarro said they cannot give a projection as to the possible level of increase in the present schedule as it will depend on the assessment level that the city council will determine.  As per policy, the city council has the prerogative to decide on the assessment levels of the real property to cushion the effect of the increase in the fair market value of the real properties. 

Mayor Mauricio Domogan has been pushing for the revision of the real property appraisal values for the past years as part of the tax reforms he was proposing for the city which also include garbage, sewer treatment and market fees

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Meanwhile, Navarro announced that her office implemented innovations to comply with the results-based performance with personnel accountability management shift of the Civil Service Commission.

Among these innovations is the improvement of the front and back line services by automation or computerized service.

“Through this system, a client’s verification will be answered in just a click of the mouse and transactions could be searched whether it is already finished or in what division was it logged and being processed,” Navarro explained.

She said they are also in the process of digitizing their section and base maps and their target is to complete the same by 2015.  By digitizing, the maps can be easily downloaded for clients requesting for location maps for a fee.