IF DAVAO City restructures its local tax rates for businesses, we have one area where its current tax rate has to be reviewed. If possible, there has to be an upward adjustment of the current tax rate in this particular business operating in the city.
We are referring to the tax imposed on the business of extracting sand and gravel, limestone, mountain mix, and stone boulders.
And why are we recommending that the tax on this industry be thoroughly reviewed and possibly adjusted upward commensurately? Simple. The hauling of the above-mentioned materials is already done not by one or five-tonner dump trucks but by vehicles with a capacity of as much as 10 to 20 tons.
Yes, we have observed with our naked eyes a concessionaire having his area along the banks of the Davao River fronting barangay Callawa in the second district. The concessionaire is not only extracting sand and gravel. It is also extracting huge stone boulders that are being supplied to a major road project in the city.
The concessionaire’s hauler vehicles are mostly, if not all, China-made Changan dump trucks with a capacity of between 10 to 20 tons. And the dump trucks are hauling almost 24 hours from the morning up to the wee hours of the night.
With dump trucks that big and doing the hauling almost 24 hours, seven days a week, we believe that the trucks are contributing to a large degree to the fast deterioration of the roads they pass through and from the concession area.
So, it is only fair for businesses of this nature to be levied with local tax commensurate with the damage their hauler trucks do to the city’s roads and bridges. The concession owners have to be made aware of existing laws attendant to road utilization and that they must be obligated to pay the appropriate taxes, so they have money to pay when the time comes that the involved roads need rehabilitation.
We also learned that in every checkpoint where monitoring of the hauled extracted resources, men (or women) manning the checkpoints are having some kind of “arrangements” with the hauling team in terms of the declaration of the true load of each truck. So beneficial are the “arrangements” that we know of one job order employee of the city assigned at the checkpoint who did not complain of the delay in their pay because his team enjoyed the fruits of the “arrangements.”
In other words, with the illegal activity of those manning checkpoints to monitor the total number of cubic meters loaded per trip of haulers, one cubic meter is not recorded. And the unreported load is one cubic meter of taxable resource.
No, they do not sell the aggregates or whatever is hauled. Instead, it has an equivalent cash for the team from the concessionaire.
Meanwhile, 10 to 20 ton hauler vehicles that traverse the roads from the concession area to the buyer of the extracted items and back again on a 24/6 basis are cracking the concrete pavement and damaging, even at a faster rate, the foundation of the road.
********************************
What really is Sen. Imee R. Marcos up to with her continuous verbal tirades against her brother, President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr.?
Her latest brickbat, to us, has already gone way overboard. Imagine, reiterating the call of anti-BBM citizens for him to resign from the Presidency! The Presidential sister is now claiming that it is not only her brother, the President, who is a drug user, but also his wife, Liza, and all three children.
Worst, she alleged that the President’s sons convinced her own children to use the prohibited drugs. All these are totally uncharacteristic of a close family member – a sister at that.
It is really hard to believe that for Senator Imee to go that far and seriously attack not only the administration of her brother but also his person and those of his family, the root of everything is one simple political charade.
There must be other, much deeper causes. It is a good thing that her brother has somehow maintained his cool despite his sister’s feeding his political enemies with explosive ammunition – fictitious or not – against him and his family members.
