IT seems unfair to assume that private sector organizations always operate more efficiently than public ones, but would a private firm make you wait for nearly four hours before they’ll take your money?
That thought crossed my mind last Friday as I waited in a taxpayers’ lounge, while my mother went a few buildings down the road to join a party that town officials were hosting for senior citizens. Each year, the town where my mother has a house gives taxpayers a generous discount if they pay in advance for next year’s real property tax bill.
This arrangement works. In 2017, the town reported P15 million in real property taxes collected during the year. But it received more than P31.9 million in deferred property taxes or taxes paid in advance, according to its annual audit report. That nearly equaled what the town paid in wages for the entire year. The same thing happened in 2016. Drawn by the discounts offered, more taxpayers chose to pay next year’s real property taxes early.
When my mother asked if I could hand over our taxes that day, I didn’t expect the wait that awaited. A few months ago, I had done the same for her property in Cebu City, and while the sight of about 200 taxpayers who filled the lounge had worried me at first, the whole transaction took a mere five minutes, from the time I received a priority number to the time I left with receipts in hand and pleasant thoughts about how efficiently the system worked.
Last Friday’s transaction started well. Fewer than 80 persons waited in a clean, airconditioned lounge that had a table in a corner where people could help themselves to free coffee and water. I handed over last year’s receipt to someone on a row of booths behind a glass partition, took note of my number in the service queue, and sat down to read, thinking I would be lucky to finish a short chapter as I waited.
Nearly four hours and many chapters later, it was finally my turn to pay.
In the interim, my mother and I had spent about 45 minutes having lunch in a fast food outlet about 100 meters down the road, then chatted with some of the other taxpayers who shared our wait. To amuse themselves, some started to call out answers when the cashier repeatedly announced some names.
“Locaylocay,” she called out. “Nalaya na (It has withered)!” one taxpayer answered, “lukay” being the Bisaya term for palm fronds. “Locaylocay!” the cashier announced again. “Giputos na sa puso (Someone’s used it to wrap rice)!” another taxpayer piped up. It was not particularly funny, but the group we sat with giggled. We had just seen an elderly man argue with one of the cashiers, because he had grown tired of waiting for more than two hours for his turn to pay. Those of us who could manage to wring some humor out of the situation did so. It was better than risking a stroke.
Stories about how problematic real property taxes are in the Philippines are not new. “Real estate is the most valuable asset and biggest financial resource,” Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said last August. But real property taxes’ contribution to government revenues remained dismal, he added, because of such problems as an outdated schedule of market values and poor collection efficiency. Local tax collection, while essential, is fraught with political risk: administrations that collect taxes strictly tend to lose elections.
The town that my mother has called home for more than 40 years depended on real property taxes for about 46 percent of its local revenues in 2017. And she was happy to pay her share, given that the town has stayed safe, has maintained its roads well, collected our garbage on time (most of the time), and just last Friday, gave its senior citizens P1,500 each for Christmas. Still, we would have been happier—and more grateful for the 20 percent discount that early taxpayers received—if we hadn’t had to wait nearly four hours just to pay.