THE Quezon City government has ended 2015 with a surplus of P1.180 billion, which is more than its target collection.
“This is the biggest increase over the past years,” city treasurer Edgar Villanueva said on Tuesday.
Much of the collections came from business tax payments of P 7.56 billion, which grew by P902.54 million or 13.56 percent from its level in 2014.
At least P3.75 billion were derived from real-estate taxes, indicating a growth rate of 7.6 percent from that of the previous year.
“Of the real-property tax collections, P1.73 billion is the city share, while P698 million is the barangay share, and P1.325 billion goes into the special education fund as mandated by law,” the city’s Public Affairs and Information Services Office’s statement read.
Among the city’s barangays with the highest share of revenue collections were Socorro, Bagumbayan and South Triangle because of their dense concentration of commercial real estate properties.
Under the Local Government Code of 1991, the special education fund is derived from one percent of the real-estate tax to fund school construction and repair, printing and publication of books, and purchase of teaching materials and equipment.
With the biggest school-age population in the country, the city government is contributing substantially to support the education of over 450,000 of its school children through the maintenance and rehabilitation of 141 public elementary and high schools, 294 day-care centers, four technical-vocational schools, one city university, and 20 public libraries.
The special education fund is also supplementing the allowances and benefits of over 10,000 public school teachers.
Mayor Herbert Bautista said the city government was able to remit P452 million to the Metro Manila Development Authority as part of its internal revenue allotment which amounted to P3.15 billion.
Villanueva credited the increase in the city’s income collections to their offer of incentives to the public to encourage them to settle their tax delinquencies under the carrot-and-stick approach and other aggressive collection efforts.
“After reconciliation with other city treasurer’s offices, our surplus is P1.180 billion plus. Our target is only P14.5 billion, but because of the CTOs’ effort, including other revenue-generating offices and departments, we were able to generate above far our target,” he said.