THE Davao City Assessor’s Office (CAO) is planning to make adjustments in the assessment levels for the Real Property Tax (RPT) collection for lands within the city.
Speaking before a media forum held last week at the City Hall, City Assessor’s Office officer-in-charge, Engineer Jaime Adalin said they intend to approve the different assessment levels per RPT category to cushion the increase of tax.
Adalin said currently the basis of valuation as far as RPT is concerned is the market value which comes from the price or the deed of sale of land.
“We cannot fix the amount, but pursuant to (law), the Sangguniang Panlungsod (City Council) can fix the assessment level. In our proposal, what has been gathered from the register of deeds, deed of sale yun ang magiging table of market values but to cushion the level of impact of the increase, nagpropose kami ng assessment level,” he said.
He said they are lobbying for decreased assessment level of a residential lot to five percent from 10 percent, a commercial lot to 20 percent from 25 percent, and an agricultural lot to seven percent from 20 percent.
As for the industrial lot, they intend to increase it to 33 percent from 25 percent for it is no longer reflective of the current market value.
He said for the buildings, they do not recommend for any tax scheme because the record they have will require an actual inspection of the area as well as the building age.
Adalin said the proposals they have are subject to public hearings.
He explained until the Revenue Code, which is subject to revision this year, more time is needed to make changes in tax schemes for real property tax.
“Magkaiba kasi real property. Schedule of market value should be approved this year, for next year we will be conducting general revision and inspection to revise all assessment in Davao City. We have 495,000 Real Property Units (RPUs) that involve land building and machinery so yun ang ire-revise namin," he said.
He said for the land, they intend to revise all of it by 2018 and it will be fully implemented in the year 2019.
“2019 sa land, 2021 naman sa buildings,” he said.
Based on the most recent data provided by the City Treasurer’s Office, the real property tax collection in Davao City reached up to P956,732,699 from January to April 2017. This is 11.19 percent higher compared to P884,037,077 in the same period last year.