Residents oppose 400% Paranaque tax hike

PARANAQUE CITY - Residents of BF Homes Parañaque, the biggest residential village in the city, expressed strong opposition yesterday to the city council’s plan to increase real property tax (RPT) rates by as much as 400 percent within the next three years.

Subdivision leaders said the country is expected to go through economic problems next year due to a recession in the United States that will also affect the Philippines.

“Although the city needs it, the timing is wrong,” United BF Homeowners Association Inc. (UBFHAI) vice president Rolando Navarro, a retired police colonel, said in an interview.

“Of course there will be resistance,” he told The STAR, noting that increasing RPT tax rates in Parañaque will definitely be a burden to property owners who also have to deal with the high cost of basic commodities and fuel.

Nelson Lacambra, Mayor Florencio Bernabe Jr.’s information officer, said Parañaque has not made any adjustments in its RPT rates since it was declared a city in 1997.

He said the city’s charter imposed a five-year moratorium on increasing tax rates, which meant that no adjustment was allowed until 2002. Lacambra also said that when Bernabe assumed office in 2004, succeeding Joey Marquez, he decided not to impose any increase in RPT rates.

Navarro said the proposed property tax rate hike was supposed to be discussed in a public hearing recently but the hearing had to be postponed.

According to him, BF Homes Parañaque alone has 8,000 to 9,000 residents who are all opposed to increasing RPT rates at this time.

He said the city is indeed using lower tax rates compared to Muntinlupa and Las Piñas, but the public should not be made to bear a sudden rate hike since it wasn’t their fault there had not been any rate increases in the first place.

Navarro said the proposal penned by Councilor Jun Romey basically seeks to impose the 400 percent RPT rate increase gradually over three years.

But staggered or not, he strongly objected to giving BF Homes Parañaque residents additional financial problems especially at a time when a storm is expected to hit.

Lacambra stressed that Romey’s objective was to put Parañaque’s tax rates at par with other localities for the benefit of the city government and its constituency.

Lacambra said public hearings and public sentiment will help Bernabe decide on whether or not he should strike down the proposed tax rate increase.