ARROYO TO LAUNCH RP'S I-TAX IN DUMAGUETE MONDAY

GMA TO LAUNCH COUNTRY’S

I-TAX SYSTEM IN DUMAGUETE



President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, after voting early on Monday in her hometown in Lubao, Pampanga will fly to Dumaguete City to launch the International Conference on Local Government Financing organized by the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the provincial government.



What President Arroyo will launch Monday will be the country’s first high tech fully computerized on-line tax mapping, billing and collection which software introduced by the German government will be adopted by other local governments attending.



The project is called Integrated Taxation System of i-TAX. When implemented,this system will modernize and systematize tax collection, thus expect more revenues for local governments.



In short, gone are the days of house to house tax mapping, tedious snail-mail billing, and poor tax collection due to politics, influence and all sorts of pressures from taxpayers.

Under the so-called I-TAX system, everything will be recorded via satellite including land topography, land mapping, and even zoning into agriucultural, residential and commercial lots for taxation purposes.

According to local GTZ team leader Ernst-Dieter Fuchs, Good governance needs sufficient income so it can fulfill the economic, social and political targets for the public welfare. Governmental soil has to be fertilized and nurtured with taxes so it can efficiently deliver basic services to the people.



Under the i-TAX system, the 50% average collection of real property taxes, special education fund, business and other taxes will be maximized because the computers are the ones giving the correct assessment and computation, unlike to day when most LGUs personnel play favorites and committee human error which are high factors of inaccuracies in tax collection.

If ideally achieved, the i-TAX system will collect higher revenues than the LGUs IRA or internal revenue allotments where most LGUs get their fund resources at present.



Two pilot cities are soon adopting the program Dumaguete and Bayawan; and the 9 towns of Amlan, Bindoy,Manjuyod, Mabinay, Pamplona, San Jose,Sibulan ,Valencia and Zamboanguita.



Specifially, i-TAX calculates taxes and non-taxable revenues; streamline the bureaucracy; improve transparency in government, high quality public service; improves tax collections; reduce corruption related to local taxes; delivers clear calculation and and a realistic basis for budgeting and tax mapping.



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