Opening Statement
Senator Pia S. Cayetano
Chair, Committee on Ways & Means
Public hearing on Real Property Valuation and Assessment Reform

Today, our hearing is on the proposed real property valuation and assessment reform, which is Package 3 of this administration's Comprehensive Tax Reform Program.

I would just like to quickly give you a short summary of the issues.

This proposed reform package, which is part of the Comprehensive Tax Reform Package, is meant to address the following problems on real property valuation and assessment:

• Rampant outdated valuations used for government purposes, especially for national and local taxation, cost overruns and foregone revenues due to local valuations used, multiple overlapping valuation of different government agencies and absence of a comprehensive real property electronic database.

• Package 3 proposes, among others, to adopt internationally accepted real property valuation standards and rationalize the process of valuation, establish a single valuation base for taxation, and for the LGU to continue to set, adjust and regulate tax rates and assessment levels.

So, I wanted to emphasize this last point because in early 2019, when the entire package was presented, the initial concerns I received, because we did hear this in totality in passing, the early reactions were on the LGUs' sense of control over this. So I am pointing that out, that based on package 3, the LGU shall continue to set, adjust, and regulate tax rates and assessment levels.

Included in the agenda are the following bills:

• Senate Bill No. 246 filed by Sen. Lacson

• Senate Bill 519 Sen. Zubiri

• Senate Bill 894 Sen. Revilla, and

• House Bill 4664

So basically, obviously, like any tax revenue measure, there are issues surrounding them, there are people who support and there are those who don't. So we will dive into the issues surrounding this topic, but basically, we want to start with hearing from the government on the administration side on why there is a need for this, why this is a priority and why we must take time to work on this in the remaining months that we have. And then, I think we'll have time for around 10 speakers today. I've requested that everyone who has any interest whatsoever submit their position papers, and if we have any extra time later on, I can call on a few more. But basically, because of the sheer volume of those who DOF would consider stakeholders here, definitely submit your position papers. And then we'll see as we go along in the days and weeks to come how we're going to resolve all of this. Whether we're going to TWG right away or if there will be other senators who will request for a briefing.