Taxation Shock
Last month I trooped on over to the local government office to pay our family’s real estate taxes. We usually pay on the first month of the year in order to avail of the 20% discount that the local government offers to early birds. But the day came as a shock to me as I found out with the property assessment form given to us that the property taxes in the City of Davao went up by almost 200%. If your property has been classified as either commercial or residential then expect the prices to go up by that much or more depending on the area. Our real estate taxes went up by about 1300%.
One reason that the property value went up was because our house got surrounded by the gated subdivisions put up by property developers. Those guys were valuing their property at over P5,000/sqm and the end result was that properties around it also got valued at that rate.
Bad enough that the neighborhood is going to get crowded and polluted in a few more years, but to also have to suffer with the increase in taxation is added injury. Sheeesh… to comfort ourselves, my wife told me that we should just strive to increase our income instead of worrying about the increased taxes. What’s done is done.
I had to go home to get more money in order to pay our taxes. The process took a whole lot longer as a lot of people were complaining on why their taxes went up by so much. The local assessor’s representative was telling everybody that the city had all the right to increase taxes because the local government code calls for an increase in local taxes every 3 years. The last time they increased taxes was in 1991.
I Thank God that we had the means to pay for our real estate taxes but feel lament for those who were in the line with me looking distraught because of the increase they have to pay. But please don’t get me wrong though, the taxes still came as a blow to us as it was indeed huge, our family had to do some belt tightening for the month because of that.
I just hope that the City puts to good use all those tax money in their coffers right now. More cemented and wider roads would be nice.
