Skirting from payment of taxes will not help in the long run.
The City Assessor's Office has advised the public to declare their real properties, especially buildings to avoid paying penalties.
"If a building is already livable, we encourage the owner to declare it right away. Otherwise, when the time comes you need to have your properties properly documented, we will assess you from the time it was erected. This will cost you more because of the penalties," City Assessor Maria Almaya Addawe said.
Addawe said proper declaration may also result in the decrease or increase in the assessed value of a property.
One of the requirements for a property to be tax-declared is a barangay certification stating among others, when the structure was built.
The City Assessors Office has a tax-mapping project, which started in 2015. Addawe said out of the 128 barangays, only 20 barangays have undergone sectioning. So far, 103,000 structures have been assigned property tags or those already issued tax declarations.
She said with only seven appraisers, Addawe said coming forward to declare a property will ease the job of their personnel.
The City Assessors Office also has an ongoing project, the light detection and ranging or LiDAR, which features multiple laser points that are used in mapping large areas accurately. It generates a map that will assist various city departments in infrastructure planning, road network management, flood mapping, disaster risk reduction, tax mapping, as well as aid potential investors in scouting viable business locations.
The project aims to equip the city government with the most accurate and reliable land information system.
With the use of the LiDAR-generated map, development of road networks will be more efficient; locating natural water ways, pathways, or drainages will be easier for the CEO, and the City Assessor's Office will be able to integrate its database with the map and verify tax declaration or assessment based on accurate data, and therefore would lead to higher or more efficient revenue collection for the city, among other benefits.