DAGUPAN Councilor Luis Samson Jr., chairman of the Dagupan city council’s committee on education, said denounced the city government for sending tax assessments to private schools in the city it deemed delinquent.

He aid the city government has no legal basis to demand local business taxes from private schools based on the current revenue code of the city.

Samson, also an official of the privately-owned University of Luzon (UL), said private educational institutions do not fall under the category of ordinary enterprises.

In a privilege speech before the Sangguniang Panlungsod last week, Samson cited the Local Government Code of 1991, Book II, Title II, Chapter 1, Section 130 (b), which states that taxes, fees, charges and other imposition on private schools “shall not be unjust, excessive, oppressive, or confiscatory, and not contrary to law, public policy, national economic policy, or in the restraint of trade”.

This, he said, is in accord with the 1987 Philippine Constitution which explicitly grants tax exemption to educational institutions, the rationale of which, according to Constitutionalist Fr. Joaquin Bernas, is to preserve the democratic choice of students, enable educational institutions to improve their quality, and make quality education more affordable to students.

Earlier, lawyer Gonzalo Duque, president of Lyceum-Northwestern University, denounced Mayor Benjamin Lim for insinuating in a public forum that owners of private schools are “tax cheats”.

The city government earlier sent notices of tax assessments to private schools in the city.

NO POWER

Samson stressed that the city government does not possess “inherent power” to impose local taxes “unless there is a valid tax ordinance passed by the Sangguniang Panglunsod to support it”.

“The recent notice of assessment on educational institutions in the city is a material and substantial invasion of the right of private schools because the city government is insisting the imposition of local business taxes even without the proper tax ordinance,” Samson said.

He called on the city government “to correct this travesty and reverse this policy on imposing taxes on educational institutions who have owned up to the bigger chunk of shared responsibility for our city.”

The councilor added that private schools are willing to lend support to the city’s development in terms of tax payments but will do so with the right legal basis.

He compared the city government’s move to the fable of the goose that lays the golden egg.

“The moral of the golden goose is simple: Short-sighted tax impositions like this can end up making all of us suffer. In its zeal to get more gold from the goose, the city government may well have cooked its own goose,” Samson said,

He cited the example of Marikina City which passed an ordinance exempting all private schools from business taxes.—LM

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