THE City Government of Bacolod will collect real property tax (RPT) on the electrical poles of the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco).
Lawyer Maphilindo Polvora, head of the City Assessor’s Office (CAO), said the City will assess the electrical poles because of the recent ruling of the Supreme Court (SC) on the case of Manila Electric Company vs. Lucena City on August 5, 2015, which states that the electrical posts of the electric cooperatives will be subjected to RPT.
“So with that pronouncement, we could collect the RPT on the electrical poles of Ceneco,” he said.
Polvora noted that the electrical poles are also considered as real property.
Polvora said he already requested Ceneco to submit the inventory of all electrical poles in Bacolod City.
He said that once Ceneco management submits the data, they will appraise the poles and the city will collect the taxes.
He also said that in 2018, Ceneco has P90 million arrears to the City on their sub-stations and other machineries, which excluded the electrical poles.
Records of the Land Tax Division showed that all properties of Ceneco were declared except for the electrical posts. Ceneco is paying P185,080.84 in land taxes every year.
Ceneco records shows that it has 31,032 poles in Bacolod.
Ceneco earlier said it is planning to charge or to pass on to consumers the RPT charged by the local government units (LGUs) for its electrical posts, insulators, transformers, electric meters and transmission lines covering the period from 1992 to 2017.
Ceneco joined the 120 other electric cooperatives all over the country under the Philippine Rural Electric Cooperatives Associations Inc. (Philreca) in filing a petition before the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to approve its proposal to pass on extra charges from the government.
Philreca stated that the issuance of the rules allowing the pass-through of RPT is valid and timely considering that the LGUs have assessed and collected RPT from electric cooperatives. The RPT should therefore be passed on to the consumers subject to post verification and confirmation by the ERC, similar to the local business and franchise taxes. (MAP)