Cebu City’s next target: bank

Osmeña says case against SMPHI serves as warning to other firms to properly pay taxes

AFTER filing charges against them, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña clarified that the City Government did not single out SM Prime Holdings Inc. (SMPHI) in running after their undeclared properties.

In his news conference yesterday, Osmeña said that the move against SMPHI should serve as a warning to other establishments and firms, particularly those big ones that the City is mindful of their tax dues.

Osmeña said their next target will be a bank.

“That is a message to every- body and I know SM is a cheater that’s why I’m focusing on them because I know what they did to us when they stole our property in SRP (South Road Properties),” he said.

Now that the charges have been filed, Osmeña said he will just leave the matter up to the court.

Last Wednesday, criminal charges were filed in court against four officials of SM for alleged violation of Article 318 of the Revised Penal Code (other deceit) after they allegedly misrepresented the size of its build- ing to reduce its tax obligations to the City Government amounting to about P23 million.

Osmeña said that the proper tax obligations of SM this year alone should have been about P37 million, but they only paid P14 million, or an underpayment of tax amounting to at least P23 million.

Fair market value

The mayor added that the SMPHI declared that SM Seaside City, which is located at the SRP has a fair market value of only P1.9 billion, which is smaller to the P3.58 billion (not P3.58 mil- lion as earlier reported) that the reassessment by the City Assessor’s Office showed.

In a separate interview, City Assessor Eleodoro Diaz said they are already validating other properties in the city to make sure that they pay right real property taxes.

The City Assessor’s Office has an on-going field validation process to find out if those declared in their records reconciled with what was seen in the field.

The Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF) encouraged the City to conduct field validation project to practice efficiency in tax collections and other revenues.

SMPHI, in a text message sent to Sun.Star Cebu, said it is yet to receive a copy of the complaint.

“The company maintains that it is compliant with all tax regulations and has timely and properly paid its real estate tax obligations on its SM Seaside Cebu property based on tax declarations and corresponding tax assessments duly issued by the City of Cebu,” said SMPHI in the text message.