by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - It's been over two decades since Rev & Tax has updated in valuation system. If this issue sounds familiar, it's because the department had spent the last year trying to complete its real property assessment that not only went unfinished but was slammed by a scathing audit showing millions in unrealized and lost tax revenues.

1993 - that's the year when rev and tax last completed a revaluation of all real property on the entire island. And two decades later, director John Camacho is hoping for some progress. "This last Friday, we issued the RFP out for the revaluation and reappraisal of the entire island, both taxable and exemption properties to include residential, commercial, industrial, and all the exemptions, government easements and all these things," he said.

Camacho says he hopes a qualified appraiser would come forth and help the department perform the statute required by law and will do so thereafter every five years. "It's basically updating the property values for both land and building and improvements - what it costs, what the value was back then and what is the value now in the market," he said.

It's not to say that the department hasn't tried to move the matter forward, in fact it started the process of the assessment last year but had to cancel because the sole offerer could not meet specific deadlines. This followed a scathing audit issued in September by the office of public accountability that identified $15.7 million in "unrealized, lost and forgone tax revenues". This came as a result of the outdated valuation system, specifically tax assessments that were based off of 1993 figures meaning current market values weren't used and instead were adjusted downward.

Camacho meanwhile says this appraisal is long time coming and not only will provide true property values but an increase in property tax. "So we're basically estimating, a rough estimate of a possible 20-30% increase in value, so there's a possibility the taxes will increase by $6 million to $7 million," he said.

Those are only based on estimates and won't be fully determined until the actual appraisal is done. Interested parties have until January 20 to submit their proposals.