The study aims to provide useful baseline information for the city policymakers in formulating appropriate RPT options and in recommending measures that will improve property compliance and other gender programs.
The study is conducted in compliance with the National Tax Research Center’s (NTRC) Annual Gender and Development (GAD) Plan and Budget Work Program which shall be submitted to the Philippine Commission on Women (PWC) for monitoring and evaluation.
The GAD Plan seeks to address gender issues requiring government agencies including local government units (LGUs) to undertake programs, projects and activities with the use of public funds that address the needs and uphold the rights of women. The PWC serves as the oversight body on women’s concern.
The NTRC, through its involvement in the Land Administration and Management Project (LAMP) has been working with various LGUs in the country in the conduct of tax policy studies particularly on real property tax (RPT) with the end in view of recommending reforms to improve revenue collection from this source.
One of the LGUs which the NTRC-LAMP has partnered with is Mandaue City. The city has just recently revised its Real Property Schedule of Market Values (SMV) for taxation purposes and is currently deliberating on various tax policy options which the city may adopt in view of the abrupt increases in property values brought about by the updating of its land values.
The findings of the study show that spouses have higher compliance ratio than male and female property owners which implies that they are more conscious of their RPT payment obligations and that they have a bigger financial base from which to source their payment. On the other hand, female property owners proved to be more compliant than male property owners. It is also noted that despite the fact that corporate property owners generally have more capacity to pay than individual taxpayers, there are many who do not comply with their RPT obligations. The over-all compliance ratio is low despite the fact that the burden of the tax was deemed very low considering that the SMV has not been revised for more than two decades.
In terms of RPT payments, the city was able to collect more RPT relative to the RPT collectibles from spouses than from male and female property owners, indicating the benefits of having a partner for additional finances for tax payments. Overall, it was also revealed that a sizeable amount still remains uncollected from property owners. Had these amounts been collected, the city would have more funds to finance its basic public services and infrastructure projects.
The expected revenue from the revised property values for RPT purposes will only be realized if the property owners will pay religiously their tax obligations. In this regard, along with the revised SMV, the city officials may consider the following measures to improve tax compliance and maximize the revenue potential of the RPT:
a. Draw up a list of the top 100 taxpayers and closely monitor their RPT payments. For unpaid account, notices of delinquencies should be immediately sent to ensure achievement of revenue targets;
b. Set up basic RPT information as to gender/groups for easy monitoring and determination of the corresponding tax compliance and/or tax burden levels;
c. Intensify tax campaigns in schools to promote awareness among students, teachers and parents of their benefits from the SEF that accrues to the Local School Board to finance construction, repair and maintenance of school buildings and other education-related expenses;
d. Involve the barangays in tax information drives. Make the people aware of their tax obligations and make known to them the basic public services and infrastructure projects that are funded out of the RPT; and
e. Continuously update and clean the property assessment database and prepare and analyze summary assessment reports for better RPT policy formulation.
