It’s hurtful to increase our taxes

There was a time when the immediate surroundings of our law office was a scene of people in constant flux. Almost everyone was in some kind of a hurry. Public utility jeepneys from all known routes used to cause traffic gridlock in our area. The shops with different mercantile offerings from foods to goods seemed full of customers and their cash registers kept ringing. The presence of a medium sized hotel and two fairly large pension houses, all with high rates of occupancy indicated that they were enjoying bankable economic activities.

That was before the Covid 19 pandemic struck. For many months now, the scene has changed. With the maddening crowd now gone, we have an eerie surrounding. There is minimal pedestrian traffic. Roads are hauntingly deserted. Nary a public jeepney is in sight. With no more souls buzzing by, stores had to close. About a dozen shops lined along Gen Junquera Street which only three years were daily filled with customers have lost their businesses and with doors shut, the building owners rake in no more rentals.

Our downtown digital printing has survived only because my wife’s family owns the building. My daughter, who manages it, has her employees with more free time to do “Marites” than run the machines. Two of our space renters operating money transmission systems told me, few days ago, that they are earning only about a fourth of their former revenues, barely enough to pay the salaries of their trimmed-down workers. The one occupant who hired about seventy IT personnel has long left us.

Time and again, I have written here that I am an incorrigible optimist. But, I too, accept reality. What I am trying to say here is a message to the city leaders that money is tight. Business is really bad. Most of us, ordinary citizens have, in the last three years, dipped our fingers into our reserves and we have nothing more left. Only by God’s miracle that I somehow managed to pay my real estate taxes.

The City Council recently passed an ordinance raising real estate taxes. It was supposed to take effect in June this year. When I asked a friend at the city assessor’s office to compute how much was I to pay, her figures devastated me. The new amounts of real estate taxes I had to pay under the new ordinance are beyond my financial capability. If only to pay the increased taxes, I planned to sell a piece of land. But what about the incoming years? What if I had already sold all assets?

Yesterday, I heard a good news. The Honorable Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama vetoed the Revised Real Property Tax Ordinance which the Sanggunian Panlungsod recently passed. The mayor’s veto was good because it meant that we Cebuanos would not suffer the astronomical, confiscatory and oppressive imposition.

The accompanying press statement issued by the mayor however worried me even more. He accordingly vetoed the ordinance not because he has a heart for us but because it did not reflect the increase he wanted in order to realize his Singapore-like dream. Mayor Rama said his team would draft a new tax ordinance embodying rates much higher than those he vetoed. He should reconsider that plan.