Makati’s business tax collection up by 14% in 1st 9 months

The Makati city hall. Photo from www.makati.gov.ph

MANILA, Philippines — The Makati city government’s business tax collection this year has gone up by 14 percent, an increase worth P600 million, which would trickle down to its budget for the succeeding years, Mayor Junjun Binay announced Tuesday.

From January to September 2012, Makati City collected a total of P9.38 billion in revenues, five percent higher than its collection for the same period in 2011.

But the bulk of the collection came from the local sources mainly from business tax collection, Binay said.

The business tax collection rose by 14 percent to P4.85 billion from P4.25 billion while the real property tax collection reached P3.26 billion, one percent less than the P3.30 billion collected in 2011.

“We are proud to note that Makati remains the country’s richest local government unit in terms of income from local sources and on a per capita basis,” Binay said in an e-mailed statement.

According to the 2010 census, Makati has a population of 529,000, far from Quezon City’s population of 2.96 million.

“It is also worth noting that our share from the Internal Revenue Allotment or IRA makes up a mere five percent of our total collections,” Binay added.

The mayor said that while larger cities in Metro Manila have been enjoying a bigger share of the IRA, Makati has consistently topped all cities when it came to locally sourced income from business and realty taxes collected.

Binay said the latest revenue hike could be partly attributed to the increased transparency and efficiency in the city government’s systems and processes achieved through harnessing information technology.

“We are evidently on the right track in this vital area of governance, as Makati recently passed the criteria for the Silver Seal of Good Housekeeping by the Department of the Interior and Local Government and won the Gawad Pamana ng Lahi Award at the regional level,” Binay said.