THE proposed tax increase in Quezon City is just equivalent to a month’s cellphone load, a ranking official of the city government said Wednesday.
Sherry Gonzalvo, chief legal officer of the Office of the City Assessor, gave the assurance the adjustment in the fair market value “won’t hurt property owners.”
The increase in real-estate tax would only be “minimal, and is equivalent to the cost of texting for a month,” she said.
The city government has been taking efforts to cushion the impact of the tax adjustments to the city residents, particularly owners of residential properties, Gonzalvo said.
“We spend around P200 to P300 a month for texting and phone calls and that’s the average rate every property owner has to pay when we implement the new schedule of fair market values,” she said.
A just increase is not too much of a burden if its benefits would see good results in terms of the delivery of more projects and services, she said.
As an example, Gonzalvo said, a property owner who has a 100-square meter residential lot classified as Residential 4 is paying a P675 annual real property tax based on an 18 percent assessment level and a fair market value of P150,000.
Under the proposed revision, the land’s fair market value would be increased to P800,000 but the assessment level would be reduced to only 5 percent, thus, the property owner’s new annual tax rate would be adjusted to only P1,000, or a difference of mere P325.
“The amount is just the equivalent of one’s cost of texting a month or a meal for a day at a Jollibee restaurant,” Gonzalvo said.
There have been suggestions to lower the 18 percent assessment level to 10 percent but after a thorough study and in consideration of the plight of the property owners, the Office of the City Assessor further lowered it to 5 percent.
“If we settled at 10 percent (assessment level), the real property increase will be as much as P2,700, and that’s burdensome,” the chief legal officer said.
