By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA
A top government official told me how an assessor of a town or city fleece a taxpayer (seller or buyer of a real property) who asked for the certification of a real property’s classification.
The classifications are residential, agricultural, and commercial.
“With the right amount given by the taxpayer, he certifies the land as residential even it is located in a commercial area,” he told me.
He explained that the government lose a huge amount of taxes that runs to thousands if not millions of pesos because a P30 thousand per square meter (PSM) of real property (land and/or building) will become P10 thousand PSM only for just a stroke of a pen by a corrupt assessor .
Then the certification will be presented by the taxpayer to the examiner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue who will compute the valuation of the real property by the assessor for the capital gain tax (CGT).
An insider at the BIR told me it is laudable if the examiner (considered as” god” to whom smart aleck taxpayers ingratiate) got the right valuation of the assessor as suspect especially after he (examiner) makes an ocular inspection to see the real location of the property.
“The problem if he does not go there to check and instead fleece the grateful taxpayer,” he said.
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A revenue district officer who was assigned to a district office in Pangasinan told me long ago that she was shocked seeing her examiners giving her a smaller computation of taxes a taxpayer should be paying the government.
“I asked them to instead re-compute it with a reasonable higher tax,” she said.
Corruption at the Assessor and the BIR do not end until the taxpayer set his foot at the graft-ridden Register of Deeds.
The classifications are residential, agricultural, and commercial.
“With the right amount given by the taxpayer, he certifies the land as residential even it is located in a commercial area,” he told me.
He explained that the government lose a huge amount of taxes that runs to thousands if not millions of pesos because a P30 thousand per square meter (PSM) of real property (land and/or building) will become P10 thousand PSM only for just a stroke of a pen by a corrupt assessor .
Then the certification will be presented by the taxpayer to the examiner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue who will compute the valuation of the real property by the assessor for the capital gain tax (CGT).
An insider at the BIR told me it is laudable if the examiner (considered as” god” to whom smart aleck taxpayers ingratiate) got the right valuation of the assessor as suspect especially after he (examiner) makes an ocular inspection to see the real location of the property.
“The problem if he does not go there to check and instead fleece the grateful taxpayer,” he said.
***
A revenue district officer who was assigned to a district office in Pangasinan told me long ago that she was shocked seeing her examiners giving her a smaller computation of taxes a taxpayer should be paying the government.
“I asked them to instead re-compute it with a reasonable higher tax,” she said.
Corruption at the Assessor and the BIR do not end until the taxpayer set his foot at the graft-ridden Register of Deeds.