By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
It’s tax payment season again — and what troubles me now, that did not before, is how a simple assessment can quietly turn into a long-term threat to one’s home.
The numbers on paper look routine enough. But remember, there’s the Republic Act No. 12001 (Real Property Valuation and Assessment Reform Act) — the law that now pegs property taxes to updated market values through a uniform Schedule of Market Values (SMV). It promises transparency, standardization, and a more “equitable” system. On paper, it looks clean, even fair.
But in practice, it begins to feel like something else entirely.
Let’s be clear about the premise: this is a revenue measure. It raises funds by aligning taxes with current market prices. But markets rise regardless of whether the homeowner’s income does. And so, the burden shifts — quietly but decisively — onto the very people who bought their land decades ago not as an investment play, but as a place to live out their final years.
Take the case of a Filipino who, in 2004, at the prime of life, bought a modest 100-square-meter lot at ₱5,000 per sqm. It was a fair price then, earned through years of work and taxes paid to the same State now reassessing that property. Today, with development all around, that land may be valued at ₱50,000 per sqm.
On paper, the owner is “wealthier.” In reality, nothing about their daily life has changed — except the tax bill that follows.
Yes, the law offers a 6% cap on increases in the first year. A grace period, of sorts. But that is only a delay. The full valuation catches up. A tax once at ₱3,000 annually can climb toward ₱30,000 over time — for the same home, the same walls, the same life lived inside it.
And when that bill becomes too heavy to bear, the consequence is stark: the State, through the LGU, may move to take possession.
That is where the law’s inhuman edge begins to show.
There are safeguards, we are told. Senior citizens may apply for limited exemptions. There is a two-year amnesty for back taxes. LGUs are given discretion to stagger increases. But these are conditional, uneven, and often inaccessible — especially in a system where both national agencies and local governments are, by public perception and experience, notoriously vulnerable to corruption and selective enforcement.
And that discretion is precisely the problem.
Because what the law standardizes in theory, it decentralizes in practice. LGUs now hold immense power to interpret, apply, and, at times, exploit these valuations. For some, it may mean moderation. For others, it can mean aggressive collection — at the expense of residents who have neither the liquidity nor the leverage to push back.
This is how a “fair” law becomes anti-resident and literally unfair.
Modernization should not mean pricing people out of homes they have already paid for in a lifetime of work. It should not force the elderly to depend on children who are themselves struggling. And it should never reduce a home into a taxable asset first, and a human refuge second.
If the government truly intends this reform for the public good, then it must do more than defend the law. It must strictly rein in its implementation, especially at the local level.
Because if left unchecked, this will not just be about taxes. It will be about displacement, distrust, and a slow, sanctioned erosion of dignity.
The irony is glaring. These are the same ideological strains that once criticized government control of industries and pushed for privatization, arguing that professional firms could better serve the public and keep resources away from corrupt hands. So, what do they really want?
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