2 towns protest drop in tax shares
DAGUPAN CITY—The municipalities of San Nicolas and San Manuel in Pangasinan province, which host San Roque Dam, are protesting the “significant” decrease in their shares from taxes generated by the 345-megawatt San Roque hydroelectric power plant.
San Nicolas Mayor Rebecca Mejica-Saldivar said her town used to receive P2.1 million every quarter. But last year, only P450,000 was remitted every quarter, she said.
“We accepted the amount but under protest,” Saldivar said in a telephone interview. “There’s been a significant decrease.”
Saldivar said she had talked with San Manuel Mayor Alain Jerico Perez and they agreed to appeal to the proper authorities the restoration of their national wealth tax shares to the 2009 level.
San Manuel receives the same share as that of San Nicolas’, said Elizabeth Corpuz, municipal treasurer.
The national wealth tax represents 1 percent of the gross revenue of a renewable energy firm, which is paid directly to the local governments that host these firms, following the sharing scheme of 20 percent for the province, 45 percent for the town and 35 percent for the barangay (village).
But the towns’ shares were slashed after the privatization of the power plant’s management when Republic Act No. 9513, or the Renewable Energy Act of 2008, took effect.
On Jan. 26, 2010, Strategic Power Development Corp. (SPDC) took over as the plant’s independent power producer administrator after the facility’s management was bid out by the state-owned Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM).
Marilou Otanes, provincial treasurer, said it was not clear why the local governments’ shares drastically went down.
Otanes said she once wrote PSALM to inquire about the province’s reduced tax share but she did not get an explanation.
In 2012, she said, the provincial share was P1.35 million and last year, it was down to P1.29 million, still lower than what the province used to receive in 2009.
The Inquirer tried to get SPDC’s side on the tax share issue but sources among local officials and in the local power industry sector could not provide the contact details of the company’s officials.
San Roque Dam straddles the two Pangasinan towns and Itogon town in Benguet province, which also has legal issues with its operators.
Last week, Itogon officials said they were planning to sue SPDC so the upland community could collect its P32-million national wealth tax share.
“We think that filing tax collection charges against SPDC is the right thing to do now,” Mayor Victorio Palangdan said.
Palangdan said the local government was having a hard time collecting its national wealth tax share since SPDC took over.
“We are pushed around as SPDC and PSALM point at each other [on who is] to pay the taxes due [the local government],” he said.
What Itogon is collecting is its share from the San Roque plant’s use of the town’s water resources, Palangdan said.
Angela Cariño, Itogon treasurer, said SPDC owed the town P32.56 million in accumulated municipal tax share from 2011 to 2013. She said the total share of the town for this period reached P39.56 million but the company had paid only P6.53 million of the total amount last year.
Cariño pointed out that the town used to collect P13.24 million in annual share from the national wealth tax until 2010.
Apart from the town government’s share, Ampucao and Dalupirip villages also need to collect their shares. Municipal records showed that the unpaid national wealth tax share covering 2011 to 2013 for Barangay Ampucao was P18.17 million while Barangay Dalupirip needed to collect P10.86 million.
On Feb. 1, village officials of Ampucao passed a resolution authorizing Benguet Gov. Nestor Fongwan to file charges to collect the national wealth tax shares.
