Public consultations on Baguio realty tax hike set

By Aileen P. Refuerzo

BAGUIO CITY – The city council through the committee on appropriations and finance will hold a public consultation on the proposed revised schedule of market various for land in the city on May 2 at 1 p.m. at the Baguio City Hall Multi-purpose Hall.

Councilor Elmer Datuin, chair of the city council committee on appropriations and finance said this will be the latest in the series of hearings conducted on the subject. 

The hearing will focus on the proposed new schedule of market values for real properties which underwent another revision recently by the city assessor’s office under city assessor Almaya Addawe.

Addawe said the new schedule offers lower tax rates than those originally proposed in 2014.  The new proposal also covers only land values and did away with the proposed increase in taxes on buildings and improvements.

Mayor Mauricio Domogan said the revision has been long overdue. 

Even the national government has chided the city for  itsfailure to implement a general revision of real property valuation in violation of section 219 of the Republic Act 7160 or the Local Government Code which mandates that the city assessor undertake a general revision of real property assessments within two years after the effectivity of the code in 1992 and every three years thereafter.

Addawe said that the first and only general revision undertaken by the city government was by virtue of City Ordinance No. 101 series of 1995 that took effect in 1996.  

“This was implemented in three phases thus the revision was fully implemented in 1998.  Had we complied with the law, there should have been six revisions to date,” she said.

She added that due to the city’s failure to update its schedule of market values, the city was cited by the Department of Finance in its LGU Fiscal Sustainability Scorecard as ‘non-compliant’ in the regular updating of schedule of market values and conduct of general revision of property assessment and was given a poor rating the area of revenue generation capacity for the years 2010, 2011 and 2013.