Property tax amnesty bill awaits Marcos okay

The proposed Real Property Valuation and Assessment Reform Act, which is awaiting presidential approval, grants a two-year amnesty on unpaid property taxes.

The bill has been ratified by Congress and sent to Malacañang.

The amnesty covers “penalties, surcharges, and interests from all unpaid real property taxes, including Special Education Fund, idle land tax, and other special levy taxes.”

If the bill becomes law, the amnesty can be availed of within two years after its effectivity.

The amnesty does not cover “delinquent real properties which have been disposed of at public auction to satisfy the real property tax delinquencies,” properties “with tax delinquencies which are being paid pursuant to a compromise agreement;” and properties with pending court cases.

Bukidnon 2nd District Rep. Jonathan Keith Flores said the proposed law is an “important and moderately complex piece of legislation because it reorganizes and improves the government bodies concerned and updates the valuation and assessment process involving real property.”

Flores, chairman of the House Committee on Government Reorganization, said the measure “is especially crucial to households and businesses, local government units, the Bureau of Local Government Finance, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.”

“Households and businesses have long been waiting for the valuations of their properties to be updated because the current values are many decades old. The low land values have kept them from deriving better gains from their real property assets to secure their financial future. Their capital gains from real property valuation reforms will far exceed, I believe, the real property taxes due to the LGUs and the national government,” he said.

LGUs stand for local government units.

“It will take a few years for the new law to take full effect. Here is where some of the complexities come in. Congress did its best to anticipate all the situations arising from the approved reforms. We set parameters for all the concerned agencies to follow,” Flores said.