Baguio business owners Clamor for reduced Property Taxes

Baguio city business owners have requested that the city council reexamine the impact of the prevailing property tax ordinance that took effect at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. They claim that the taxes imposed are “excessive” as businesses struggle to recover.

Baguio Country Club (BCC) and several hotel owners have asked the city council to adjust Ordinance No. 16, series of 2020, which increased taxes by almost 4,000%.

BCC officials claim that they would previously pay P4 million in property taxes, but the 2020 ordinance raised that to P11 million. This excludes the real property tax of the Club’s golf course.

Another one of the city’s oldest hotels, Mountain Lodge, was charged P259,000 this year following the tax increases. According to its owner, Jeannine McCann Chann, the tax used to be around P65,000.

“There is nothing equitable in what has been done (to us by this ordinance),” she said during the council’s regular session.

The law was enforced on a staggered basis with only 70% being collected in the 2020 fiscal year, while the full 100% was collected in the 2021 tax period.

According to attorney Christine Angelica Elveña, “the highest possible increase in fair market values would be 2,300 percent for the residential zone.”

Tourist-related businesses in Baguio lost a combined P1.6 billion during the Luzon lockdown in March 2020. This slowed economic recovery significantly when the city reopened to tourists toward the end of that year.

Source: Inquirer