The officials of Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Bacolod Filipino Chamber of Commerce and Industry will meet with the Bacolod City officials today to discuss a possible win-win solution for both parties involving the new rates in the 2011 New Revenue Code of Bacolod City.

MBCCI president Frank Carbon said they are scheduled to meet with Vice Mayor Jude Thaddeus Sayson today and, hopefully, Mayor Evelio Leonardia, to discuss a rate increase that will be acceptable to all.

He said the city upheld the implementation of the local tax law despite the opposition raised by the business sector.

He also said the businessmen have paid their taxes, but under protest, since they have a pending petition before the Department of Justice seeking the declaration of the New Revenue Code as illegal and unconstitutional.

They have appealed it before Justice Secretary Leila de Lima but she declined to act on their petition in her reply dated July 21, 2012, stating that a similar complaint was filed before the Regional Trial Court by former Bacolod Rep. Monico Puentevella, who also has a business interest that needs to be protected, he said.

De Lima, however, told the businessmen to choose whether they will continue to petition with DOJ or let the existing complaint at the RTC proceed and be decided, he said.

Carbon said the business sector had asked the DOJ Secretary for reconsideration not to decline their petition because she has already stated before that the DOJ also has jurisdiction on the matter.

In her resolution, the Secretary of Justice said that the MBCCI and BFCCCI are raising the same issues as those in the appeal of Rolling Hills Memorial Park Inc., represented by Puentevella, in the case it filed against the City of Bacolod; and that it declines to act on their appeal in order not to pre-empt the RTC in acting on the issues before it.

Carbon said the imposition of the New Revenue Code really caused irreparable and irreversible damage to the business sector because the increase has reached up to 1,700 percent and as low as 300 percent.

“If this will continue, it will result to reduction of employees and nature forbids, closure of business establishments,” Carbon said.

He claimed that such tax increases is beyond what is being required by law.

He also said that the DOJ has not yet dismissed their petition as City Legal Officer Joselito Bayatan had said.

Bayatan had said earlier that the appeal of the businessmen has become “frivolous and anachronistic,” because there is really a need to increase the taxes of Bacolod that have remained the same for the past 18 years.

He said the appeal against the Revenue Code is no longer applicable because it is a must for local government units to readjust their old taxes.

Bayatan said Bacolod simply complied with the joint memorandum circular 1220-01 of the Department of Interior and Local Government and the Department of Finance, entitled “Updating Local Revenue Code”, which enjoined LGU's to update their Revenue Code, based on the provisions of the Local Government Code of the Philippines.*CGS

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