Monday, July 20, 2009 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES [ BusinessWorld Online ]
THE PROVINCIAL government of Batangas has approved a mea-sure which will provide relief to those who failed to pay their real property tax last year.
The measure, which waives the collection of interest on late payments, was signed into law by Gov. Vilma Santos-Recto on Wednesday last week.
“This is our way of helping taxpayers cope with their basic needs, while we are going through the economic crisis,” Chona M. Dimayuga, chairman of the prov-incial board’s committee of ways and means and sponsor of the tax relief ordinance, said in a phone interview late last week.
She said that about P1 billion worth of real property taxes had not been collected by the provin-cial government last year.
Under the law, an interest rate of 2% per month is imposed on the unpaid tax the succeeding year.
Under the ordinance, affected taxpayers may avail of the tax relief program until December 29 by accomplishing a form, stating that the unpaid real property taxes will be paid within a maxi-mum period of five years from the date of application in 10 semiannual, equal installments.
The schedule for the full pay-ment of tax due for this year, as well as the first installment pay-ment of the tax delinquency, will be included in the notarized form.
The ordinance also said fur-ther failure to punctually pay the installment on the tax delin-quency will warrant imposition of a penalty.
“Said unpaid installment will earn an interest of 2% a month until said installment is fully paid,” Ms. Dimayuga said.
In the event that the delin-quent taxpayer defaults twice on the payment of the semiannual installments, then the total ba-lance of the real property tax delinquency as well as the entire amount of interest will become immediately due.
Failure to pay even after this point will subject the property concerned to public auction.
“The ordinance is effective immediately,” Ms. Dimayuga said. — Louella D. Desiderio
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