Manila freezes realty tax rate hike

Good news for Manila land owners but bad news for teachers.

The Manila City council approved Manila Mayor Lito Atienza’s request for a freeze of the planned increase in the city’s real tax rates, purportedly the same fund from which the city chief executive had promised to source the tutors’ promised allowance increase.

During yesterday’s postponed council session, Ways and Means Committee head Councilor Jocelyn Dawis-Asuncion said that she and other councilors have agreed to shelve City Ordinance 7988, which, among others, designs a new "schedule of fair market values" for taxes on real estate properties in Manila.

Last week, however, teachers belonging to the Manila Public Teachers’ Association (MPSTA) denounced Atienza’s alleged failure to deliver on his promise to give them a P500 increase in their monthly allowances. The tutors said that the mayor vowed to them that the fund would be taken from "real estate tax collections."

"I still don’t see why they cannot give the increase to us," said MPSTA director Arsenio Jallorina, " They have been collecting those taxes for three years now."

Atienza, in his response to the teachers last Monday, said he would deliver on his promise as soon as the needed P7-million fund becomes available. "Everything has been increasing, the prices of commodities and even the fares, still our allowances has remained the same," added Jallorina.

According to Dawis-Asuncion any new real estate tax schedule will have to wait until 2002, when the city council is again set to make its biennial tax assessment.

"It’s a matter of political will. If they want to give us our increase, they can do so," said the MPSTA official.

The last time the teachers’ allowance was increased, from P500 to P1,000, was in 1993. It was increased for four months during the 1995 elections to P1,500 until it was reverted to P1,000 with the excuse that the Commission on Audit was questioning the "unauthorized" increase. Jallorina said Atienza promised to give the increase "with or without any legal impediment".

Jallorina said they don’t know what kind of authorization is required for the increase to be effected, when teachers from other parts of Metro Manila are receiving as high as P2,000 in allowances.

Jallorina said they have also been told in the past that the needed fund for the increase is available but Department of Education officials in Manila require them to " present their legal basis" as to why it should be granted to them.