Legazpi City: The Albay Provincial Council is considering the imposition of real property tax against telecommunications companies (telcos) operating in the province.

Last week, the ways and means committee of the Albay council started deliberating on the planned taxation of the properties of telcos, which include cell sites.

The move was spurred by the recent issuance of a recall directive from the Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF), which overruled an earlier opinion upholding the tax exemptions supposedly granted to telcos as found in their franchises.

According to provincial legal officer Rodolfo Bonafe Jr., Memorandum Circular No. 70-2012 issued by BLGF director Salvador Castillo was a recall of its previous opinion rendered in favor of telcos.

The cited memorandum ordered provinces to start assessing taxes for the properties of telcos, Bonafe noted.

The move was also prompted by the decision of the Supreme Court (SC) in Digitel vs. Batangas City, which upheld the power of local government units to tax telcos for their real properties.

The province was earlier cautioned over its earlier moves to assess telcos for tax.

Bonafe, however, said that the BLGF was very clear when it declared that telcos, particularly Digitel and Bayantel, did not enjoy any exemption from local taxes.

He explained that the recent High Court decision in the case of Digitel vs. Batangas could be the basis of the said circular.

Albay already has an SC-decision rendered in its favor centering on the issue of whether it can impose real property tax against entities enjoying a franchise.

A 1992 SC-decision granted the petition of Albay to impose against and collect real property tax from the National Power Corp. (Napocor), which used to benefit from tax exemptions granted during the start of dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s regime.

Albay was able to cull an initial collection of more than P300 million in realty taxes from Napocor. The collection benefited the towns of Daraga, Tiwi and Ligao City where Napocor properties are located.

The effort to tax and collect payment from the state-owned Napocor was a brainchild of then governor Romeo Salalima, who was a retired official of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Lawyer Danilo Azaña, then the Albay vice governor, said that Salalima was hailed for making Albay a “multimillion province.”

Salceda, meanwhile, said that the additional taxes culled from Telcos would be used to fund scholarship programs for college students.

This developed even as Gov. Joey Salceda of Albay criticized the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for suggesting that the government increase taxes on mobile phone text messages to augment government funds.

According to Salceda, IMF chief Cristine Lagarde’s statement urging President Beningo Aquino 3rd’s administration to tax text messages was irrational because the country is considered the texting capital of the world.