BAGUIO CITY—The City Council Committee on Tourism and Special Events wants the city’s finance officers to maximize revenue generation measures by collecting realistic amounts from the hotel occupancy tax mandated under a city ordinance.
Councilor Elmer Datuin, chairman of the Committee, said the local government was not able to collect realistic figures from the different hotels here because the City Treasury Office relied on the honesty of the hotel owners to declare their income from their existing hotel rooms.
“Our city’s finance officers must devise a system to monitor the compliance of hotel owners to the payment of the hotel occupancy tax to add up to the internally generated resources that will help bankroll the implementation of more development projects and enhance the delivery of basic services to our constituents,” Datuin said.
Under the city’s tax ordinance, hotel owners are mandated to pay P5 for every occupied room per night as hotel occupancy tax and that the same shall be paid to the local treasury office.
But Datuin admitted it seemed local hotel owners were paying a uniform of 30 occupied rooms per month which was doubtful considering the enormous influx of foreign and domestic visitors to the city, especially during weekends.
City Treasurer Alex Cabarrubias confirmed the local government was not actually getting the right revenues from the hotel occupancy tax because they simply relied on the declarations of the hotel owners on the occupied rooms.
According to him, the local treasury office would devise a system or assign responsible personnel who would conduct an inventory of the occupied rooms in the different hotels in the city for them to be compelled to pay the right hotel occupancy tax.
Datuin advised the city’s finance officers to be aggressive in collecting the right revenues from the taxpayers to help increase the income of the local government.
Based on the data from the proposed city budget of P1.76 billion next year, 42 percent of the income would be derived from internal sources while 58 percent would come from external sources.
That would mean the local government was still dependent on funds from the national government, particularly the Internal Revenue Allotment.
Datuin admitted the city’s budget of P1.76 billion next year was way below the P2.5 billion budget of similar highly urbanized cities with similar or slightly higher population and land area.