To Increase Revenue,City’s Tax Mapping Set

Starting on Monday next week 24 personnel from the Cebu City assessor’s office will be conducting tax mapping operations on all real property owners in the city to find out which of them are not paying the correct amount of taxes.
Cebu City Administrator Jose Marie Poblete has approved the recommendation of City Assessor Eustaquio B. Cesa for the creation of two teams of tax mappers at 12 persons per team in order to update the records of the real property owners in the city.

Real Property includes the land, houses or buildings and the machineries.

Poblete believed that tax mapping will increase the revenue collections from real properties because several of the  real property units, meaning for every titles, are still reflected as residential but these are already converted to commercial purposes.

Poblete gave an example where a residential house or residential lots have been used by their owners for commercial business without informing the city so that the tax rate can be adjusted that is why their taxes remain less.

“Gamay man ang tax rate sa residential compared sa commercial. Ang ubang mga yuta nga narehestro nga residential gipaabangan na diay og gasoline station apan ang iyang buhis gibasi gihapon sa residential,” Poblete said.

City Treasurer Emma Villarete said the city’s overall revenue collections from the real property taxes last year had reached to P614 million, but the amount left for the city’s general fund was only P303 million because the gross collection would still be deducted with an amount equivalent to one percent for the Special Education Fund and another amount that is for the share of the barangays.

During the stint of then mayor and now Cebu City South District Rep. Tomas R. Osmeña the tax mappers that he created when he assumed office in 2001 had found out that one of every five business establishments in the city’s urban barangays is operating without business permit.

The records showed that out of the 11,287 establishments inspected, 2,384 have no business permits. For the business tax mapping, it will be handled by the City Treasurer’s Office.