City Hall bets on community outreach to improve tax collection. Photo: Courtesy.

Héctor Ruiz Mejía.- The municipality of Jocotepec approved a general increase of five percent in taxes for the fiscal year 2022, said Marcela Jiménez Góngora, director of the Treasury.

The new revenue law proposed by the Plenary of the Jocotepec City Council was approved by the Governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, through the secretary of the H. Congress of the State, under decree number 28644/LXIII/21.

The Public Treasury of Jocotepec projects the estimated collection of 205,661,384 pesos during the fiscal year from January 1 to December 31, 2022.

Water service, like other services, will increase by five percent, except for «some users in very specific cases, who will have a higher percentage because there was some update in their accounts,» commented the interviewee.

In this case, the director suggested approaching the potable water directorate to specify the charges, since the intention is to encourage the community to bring current accounts.

However, in order to reach the collection goal, the Jocotepec City Hall has implemented new measures to generate an approach to the community and encourage people to pay their taxes on time.

A new online payment platform is available where a bot will display a menu with the property or water bill and will generate a reference to make the payment in OXXO, payment at cash registers, even via WhatsApp.

Also, the City Hall announced the new expanded hours to pay taxes that will include Saturdays from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm.

This after José Miguel Gómez López declared that the municipality was under a terrible administration of the collection issue, «there was chaos in the collection issue, such as water, many irregularities,» said the mayor.

While the new measures are expected to improve tax collection, the Treasury Director assured that they will wait until January 15 to have a comparison of how much the new measures helped the population to regularize and pay their taxes on time.

Translated by Kerry Watson