The City Council on Tuesday approved on second reading a proposed ordinance mandating online payment of taxes and permit fees for Davao.
Councilor Joanne Bonguyan said that the ordinance is the solution to the long line of people queuing at the City Treasurer’s office to pay their taxes.
“With this ordinance, all the city treasurer’s office needs to do is either to acknowledge or accept payment online,” she said.
The proposed ordinance will still be subjected to third reading before the City Council decides to approve it.
Bonguyan said the Davao City Information Technology Center built the infrastructure in partnership with Land Bank.
“All you need is your mobile phone or computers then you can pay your government obligations through online,” Bonguyan added.
Under the first phase of this pilot project are Business Tax and occupancy permits. Second Phase is the real estate tax and all the miscellaneous fees and the third phase is the payment of business people in the district offices.
The system initially will issue temporary receipts in lieu of official receipts, meaning taxpayers will still have to acquire manually-issued receipts until such time that city treasurer’s office will be familiar with the online system.
“So the process is from the payment online, you present the receipts sa city treasurer’s office and then they will issue the manual receipts,”said Bonguyan. She also stated that upon the payment online it will reflect on their system whether the temporary receipt is valid or not because it is a real-time system.
Aside from solving the long line issue in the City treasurer’s office another purpose of this ordinance is to increase the ranking of Davao city in the Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Index (CMCI) to attract investors to expand their business here in the city.
“We make it accessible and convenient sa lahat ng business owners,” Bonguyan said.
The manual payment will still be available for the public because the online payment is just an option to make their transactions faster. Bonguyan stated that if the Internet connectivity will be an issue then they will request the CITC to upgrade the internet system of the city. The approval of the ordinance and the signing of MOA by Mayor Sara Duterte- Carpio and Land Bank are the only steps that they are waiting to begin phase one.
