Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte of Camarines Sur lauded President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s signing into law of Republic Act 12001 or the Real Property Valuation and Assessment Reform Act.
The lawmaker said the new law shall upgrade the tax collection efficiency of local governments while hauling in more investments from the private sector, invigorating the real estate market and speeding up the implementation of the President’s infrastructure buildup program ‘Build Better More (BBM).’”
Villafuerte, a co-author of the newly signed RA 12001, said this new law shall reorganize the Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF) into the sole state agency in charge of streamlining and boosting real property valuation in the country by coming up with a single Schedule of Market Values (SMVs) for all LGUs “to correct the current absence of a unified national standard that has only bred red tape, ROW (right-of-way) conflicts and lengthy court disputes—and barred Government from harnessing the full potentials of the land sector as a rich asset for national growth and development.”
An attached agency of the Department of Finance (DOF), the BLGF is in charge of empowering LGUs to attain fiscal sustainability through the formulation and implementation of sound policies on LGU taxation and collection enforcement, revenue administration, credit financing, public finance management and real property assessment.
“The weak collection efficiency of LGUs hurts their collective capability to raise bigger revenues from real properties, hence hampering their ability to bankroll sufficiently the necessary public services for the good of their respective constituents,” Villafuerte said.
RA 12001, or the Real Property Valuation and Assessment Reform Act (RPVARA), was signed by President Marcos at Malacañan Palace last June 13.
The President signed RA 12001 on Thursday along with RA 12001—which Villafuerte had likewise co-authored—that established the Negros Island Region from Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Bacolod City and Siquijor.
Villafuerte, who is president of the National Unity Party (NUP), explained that this new law shall reorganize and strengthen the BLGF to provide stronger institutional support to LGUs with regard to all matters relating to real property valuation in the country.”
“The BLGF shall be the lead agency tasked to review and approve the SMVs for all LGUs in the hope of separating the technical function of real property valuation from the political function of taxation practiced by our local elective officials,” said the former governor.
He added, though, that RA 12001 does not in any way curtail the power of LGUs to lower and adjust assessment levels and tax rates in accordance with the provisions of RA 7160, as amended, for residential property owners as deemed necessary.