City Council to approve tax exemption for Bogotá's public universities

The rector of the National Pedagogical University (UPN) and coordinator of the Capital District chapter of the SUE, Adolfo León Atehortúa Cruz, with the support of 10 councilors, presented to the Bogotá council a draft agreement seeking the exemption of the payment of district taxes to the public universities that operate in the city: National University of Colombia (Bogotá campus), Military University Nueva Granada, Francisco José de Caldas District University, Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca and National Pedagogical University.

The idea is that these HEIs do not pay property tax, valuation for general or local benefit, or urban delineation tax., and can reinvest those resources in facility improvements, among other things.

According to estimates by Atehortúa Cruz (pictured), the annual payment of the university under his charge for unified property tax alone amounts to more than 1.1 billion pesos, which, with the proposed exemption, could be allocated to improving the conditions of higher education services not only in his institution, but in all public universities in the city.

The project also includes the exclusion of the payment of the general or local benefit value contribution to the properties owned by state universities, caused from the issuance of the Agreement.

It also intends to exclude the aforementioned institutions from the declaration and settlement – as appropriate – and from the payment of the urban delineation tax and the participation in the capital gain when any of the acts or actions that constitute the generating event of the respective tax are carried out on properties owned by them.

The rector of the UPN declared that the money equivalent to the proposed exemptions could be reinvested not only in the improvement of the facilities of those universities, but also in the academic and welfare benefits that they provide to their students, most of whom come from popular sectors of the District, with great economic limitations. “This benefit, if it materializes,” said Atehortúa Cruz, “would inject some optimism into the tight finances of public higher education institutions, which are currently struggling due to budget cuts by the national government and the enormous burdens that are exhausting their meager resources.”.

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