Laoag City Mayor Michael V. Fariñas has urged officials of the Ilocos Norte Electric Cooperative (INEC) to pay their franchise tax obligation as the estimated P15 million taxes had already been incorporated in the 2006 annual budget of the city government. The City Treasurer’s Office records showed that INEC has a total of P19,542,745.06 franchise tax obligation as of January 16, 2006. The said tax obligation is for the utility firm’s franchise taxes from 1993 to November 2005. The franchise tax obligation was computed based on INEC’s gross receipts which was pegged at 75 percent of 1 percent for 1993-2001, and 82.5 percent of 1 percent for 2002-2005. “Masapul a makolekta daytoy nga amount ta di ket iti city government iti ag-suffer no kas pagarigan saan makolekjta daytoy a buo (The said amount must be collected in full or the city government will suffer financially),” Fariñas said. INEC has started partially paying their tax obligation to the city government as of July last year. They paid P300,000 monthly until this month. In a series of meetings between the mayor and INEC officials, it was decided that the P300,000 monthly payment would be increased to P500,000. The INEC board agreed to this. Meanwhile, INEC General Manager Romillas C. Pascual assured that the P500,000 monthly payment starting this February would be complied to by the cooperative. Pascual, however, declined to comment on whether they would be able to pay the full amount within this year as he explained that INEC has no available fund for it. Earlier, INEC officials explained that the delay in their payment of franchise taxes to the city and provincial governments was due to the still unreleased tax recovery formula they requested from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC). Pascual promised though that they would pay all of their tax obligations to the city and provincial government once the ERC formula is released. INEC Board President Rey Ruiz, for his part, said he understands the city government’s situation which is why the board approved the additional P200,000 monthly payment. “Daytoy iti mangipakita a saan mi pulos a pagtallikudan iti anyaman nga obligasyon mi a bayadan no laketdi adda na-ananay a pagibasaran ket urayen kuma ngarud daytoy tax recovery formula nga iyetnag iti ERC tapnon adda met basis mi for computation (This shows that we are willing to pay our tax obligations as along as there is a basis so we should also just wait for the tax recovery formula from the ERC so we could have further basis for computation),” Ruiz explained. Dominic B. dela Cruz
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