STA. RITA, Pampanga – Residents of this town will soon experience the convenience brought about by the new Integrated Tax Management System (iTax) after its test run held at the municipal hall Tuesday.
The province’s Management Information System Office (MIS) and Provincial Assessor’s Office (PAO) together with the Provincial Treasurer’s Office led the second operation of the new iTax system.
The iTax implemention here is preceded by Minalin town which now offers faster processing of real property tax (RPT) payments.
According to Provincial Assessor Engr. Romeo Dizon, the iTax system aims to transform the province’s current tax collection from a lengthy, tedious, and manual process to an efficient, transparent, and automated system which will greatly benefit the Kapampangan tax payers, particularly in RPT.
Further, this town’s real property data is now fully encoded following the recently concluded tax mapping operations conducted and fully-funded by the province.
According to Municipal Assessor, the tax mapping operations resulted in the list of 15,000 real property units here.
Manuel Mendoza of the PAO presented the iTax’s features while IT consultant Dave Concepcion led the demonstration of the new system in front of various stakeholders in this town led by Mayor Yolanda Pineda.
Pineda expressed her gratitude to the provincial government headed by Governor Lilia Pineda for the launch of said program, which she said will greatly benefit her constituents.
Meanwhile, Governor Pineda clarified that no additional fees will be charged to the tax payers for the implementation of the new iTax system.
Despite this, the governor remains optimistic on the revenue-generation capability of the new iTax system along with its efficiency and transparency.
According to the records of PAO, the province already had an estimated P500-million collection on RPTs alone after the successful tax mapping operations last year. This was preceded by the P24-million yearly collection in the last 24 years.
The governor added, the new system will help the provincial government to be less dependent on its Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) and proudly shared that Pampanga is one of the debt-free provinces in the country.
By Angelique DC. Tuazon, PIO Pampanga
