Friday, February 22, 2008 Lapu-Lapu City can collect tax from airport
LAPU-Lapu City will ask the court to order the garnishment of the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority’s (MCIAA) funds deposited with the Philippine National Bank and the Land Bank of the Philippines.
The move came after the Court of Appeals (CA) denied MCIAA’s motion for reconsideration on an earlier ruling designating it as a government-owned and controlled corporation and not exempt from local taxes.
“It is now final and executory,” Assistant Lapu-Lapu City Attorney Michael Dignos told Sun.Star Cebu yesterday.
In a notice of collection sent in 2003, the Lapu-Lapu City Government demanded P162.05 million in taxes from MCIAA for 1992 to 1997. The amount is projected to double once taxes from 1998 to the current year are included.
With the ruling, Lapu Lapu officials say they are now determined to file a petition for garnishment.
“Hindi yata pwede yan (I think that’s not possible),” MCIA General Manager Danilo Francia said in a long-distance interview. Francia is in Singapore attending a summit on airport management.
Francia refused to comment on the CA decision, saying he still has to receive a copy of it.
The CA ruling was issued Feb. 12. City Hall received a copy of the decision last Tuesday. The ruling was signed by Associate Justice Isaias Dicdican and concurred to by Associate Justices Francisco Acosta and Stephen Cruz.
MCIAA, through the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), filed the motion for reconsideration invoking the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) vs. Court of Appeals case. The Supreme Court (SC) had ruled that MIAA was exempt from real property taxes imposed by Parañaque City.
But in ruling against the MCIAA, the CA said the MIAA case could not be used as precedent of the case because it was still on appeal at the SC. The court said the MCIAA case remains to be the “controlling law” on the issue.
It also said the MIAA ruling could not be invoked in the MCIAA case because it could not be considered the “law of the case.”
“It is merely a rule of procedure and does not go to the power of the court and will not be adhered to where its application will result in an unjust decision. It relates entirely to questions of law and is confined in its operation to subsequent proceedings in the same case,” the CA said in its ruling.
The CA said the same doctrine provides that “whatever has been irrevocably established constitutes the law of the case only as to the same parties in the same case and not to different parties in an entirely different case,” like the case of Manila airport.
In an earlier interview, Francia said they are ready to concede that certain airport properties are not tax-exempt but the airfield, runway and taxiway and the lots they are based on are exempted from local taxation.
“You cannot tax a roadway or the sea,” Francia said.
Void
The SC, in an en banc ruling dated July 20, 2006 and penned by Justice Antonio Carpio, ruled that airport lands and buildings are exempt from real estate taxes.
While the ruling was specific to the case of the MIAA and the City of Parañaque, it bears similarity to the conflict between the MCIAA and the Lapu-Lapu City Government.
“We declare void all the real estate tax assessments, including the final notices of real estate tax delinquencies, issued by the City of Parañaque on the Airport Lands and Buildings of the Manila International Airport Authority, except for the portions that the Manila International Airport Authority has leased to private parties,” the SC said. (AIV)
