QC offers new incentive for taxpayers

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MANILA  — Quezon City taxpayers who will be paying their business taxes this year in the amount which is 30 percent higher than their payment in the previous year shall be provided exemption from auditing and examination of business records.

This grant of exemption will prove vital in improving the city’s collection efficiency, and thus augment the drive to fund QC’s more pressing financial needs.

The exemption is being granted by the QC government as an offshoot of an ordinance approved recently by Mayor Herbert Bautista, who earlier announced that his administration will continue to remain aggressive in its tax collection effort to be able to finance the various requirements for governance and growth of the city.

The ordinance, principally authored by Councilor Victor Ferrer Jr., however, does not apply to business owners and operators who have pending cases in court or any administrative agency related to records, audited financial statements and other similar documents.

Quezon City has over 60,000 registered business establishments.

To avail of the automatic exemption, the city government requires all business owners and operators in the city to present a duly certified proof of their increased business tax payment for 2015 relative to their 2014 tax payments for the business concerned.

“Providing exemption from the submission of business records, books, audited financial statements and other similar documents, as well as exemption from the inspection and examination of their business records are forms and modes of encouragement and incentive to said taxpayers to persuade, push and drive them to declare more taxable income,” said Ferrer.

Ferrer is also the principal author of two other tax measures approved recently by the QC Council designed to improve the city’s tax collection efficiency. Chief among this is the ordinance granting relief to real property taxpayers who have incurred more than five years of delinquent real property taxes.