Unless you're a filthy businessman or a hardcore activist, or perhaps some other creature out to defy everything that stands between you and your liberty, there's this one thing in this world, or at least in this side of the world, which you can hardly escape. You are under its mercy from cradle to the grave. Even before you're born, you're already chained to it. Long after you're dead, or your flesh has turned dinner for the maggots, you're still shackled to it. It's tax. You get to see it, feel it, almost everywhere. You smoke and drink those potent vices, they'll squeeze revenues out if it and call it "sin" tax, as if purchasing them is already a sin in itself. You buy something, the price of which is already inclusive of tax, they will still tax it, and call it "value added tax". As if that wasn't enough, they even expanded it, for Christ's sake. If it moves, the government is out to tax it. If it doesn't move, well, you still get the same. In the eyes of the government, everything is fair game. There's not much of a difference. They do not impose tax on it now, they'll impose tax on it a bit later, or sooner than you think. Sort of makes you wonder what else in this universe is left untouched by the government's coffers. The next thing you know, you can't walk your feet unless you've paid the government for using what you have since birth. What else is there?
I can't enumerate the whole gamut, but text message is no exception.
It has been taxed before, but our wise representatives in the plenary halls of the lower house—if not the lowest—are calling for more to satiate whatever kind of thirst is plaguing their guts. They practically want more, or demand for more of the same. We should have seen it coming since the first day mobile phone companies and service providers brought their wares and shares to our shores. And like night following the day or the other way around, it should not come as a surprise that they did so the soonest time they had the opportunity to lay their hands on these, eager as they are to have the touch of Midas, turning everything they lay their hands onto into gold. But to call for heavier tax? Now that's another story.
I do not have the statistics, but it seems to me that there's a very good chance you'll find a stranger in the city or elsewhere making the most of her or his mobile phone. It's as if mobile text messaging has transcended the status of being a mere trend. More to that, it has become an essential public utility, a basic service if you will, or somewhere close to that. My youngest brother, barely at the age of nine, knows very well how to use the cellphone, except that, still, he does not own one. But that does not exempt him either from being one of the countless people who use a taxed service. As for the older generation, well, it doesn't raise the hairs on my skin if I see one from that generation busy hammering the keypad with her or his fingers. There are millions more out there doing the same thing every waking hour or minute of their lives. I can only begin to imagine the sheer volume of text messages sent on a single day. I can only begin to imagine, too, the sheer amount of money being spent on these messages on a single day.
The point is that the government now sees the perfect opportunity to take a larger slice of the cake, at a time when more and more of us are using short messaging service, unlimited or otherwise. I understand the government needs revenues to further its duties to the public. What I do not understand is why the same government is ever willing to give when it is also ever determined to take away? Surely, others will say that the proposal to increase the tax collected from text messages will be shouldered not by the subscribers but by the companies, chipping off fractions from the income of these companies while leaving intact what subscribers have to pay. But surely, still, isn't it the same reason why companies of any kind are driven to either reduce the breadth of their services or increase the fees for the same? It is certainly the height of insanity, or of unreasonable madness, for a business thriving on what it does best to deprive itself of the very reason why it exists. It's there for the bread. It's there for the money. Reducing its blood source on its own is akin to assisting itself not to its own honorable harakiri or seppuku but to plain suicide. Whichever way you look at it, these service providers will still find ways to unburden itself, or to throw the burden completely at our shoulders.
This is far more than just the issue of taxing text messages to absurd lengths. The whole meat of this is the very thought of having representatives wanting to suck the life through our pores but leaving us to wonder where our taxes go. Le Cirque, perhaps? Or maybe a distant house somewhere in America, perhaps in Bay Area? Or closer to home, if not right smack at home, maybe in roads and bridges that have never seen the light of day? Or if they ever did, maybe in roads and bridges that already badly need major repairs long before they could even be completed, if they will ever be? Or maybe in a few tens of rubber boats waiting to serve the entire nation during times of weather calamities? The human beings in congress, or the lack thereof, can tell us exactly where all they want, but I'd gladly return a finger. As to which finger, that's entirely up to your imagination. I'd appreciate it if you prefer the middle.
It's not about getting the funds and where to get them. You won't get them if you're looking in all the wrong places at all the wrong times. It's about proper appropriation, or putting the money where it is truly needed, quite apart from putting our money to where their mouths are, stuffing them full if only to stop them from bickering and wasting themselves. Congress wants more money? Tell your boss to stop hauling her ass and all of yours to foreign countries for impractical reasons, like rubbing shoulders with foreign leaders in the hopes of their luster being passed on to you. That's bull, quite apart from shit. Congress wants more money? Tell yourselves to stop wasting the people's money during campaign season. We don't need your tarpaulins and posters to remind us that today is graduation day, or Christmas, or the fourteenth of February, or the feast day of a patron saint. You only need to tell us just exactly where the people's taxes go.
I remember the story of a former public servant, who also was a former nun, who gave up on paying taxes especially under this administration. Well, she may have also given up on god, but that's beside the point. The point is, she refused to pay her taxes because she wasn't convinced that she was getting what she was supposed to be paying for. To this day, no tax evasion case has yet been filed against her, but she says she is anticipating the day that the BIR will finally take notice that someone somewhere isn't paying something, or that they're missing a spot from the roll. She hopes they'll send her a demand letter soon enough. She also tends to her expansive garden, and she says that the only thing that the government can demand from her are her bitter gourds. And she'll send them flying over the fence the first moment they set foot on her property.
What can I say? You get what you deserve.
I can't enumerate the whole gamut, but text message is no exception.
It has been taxed before, but our wise representatives in the plenary halls of the lower house—if not the lowest—are calling for more to satiate whatever kind of thirst is plaguing their guts. They practically want more, or demand for more of the same. We should have seen it coming since the first day mobile phone companies and service providers brought their wares and shares to our shores. And like night following the day or the other way around, it should not come as a surprise that they did so the soonest time they had the opportunity to lay their hands on these, eager as they are to have the touch of Midas, turning everything they lay their hands onto into gold. But to call for heavier tax? Now that's another story.
I do not have the statistics, but it seems to me that there's a very good chance you'll find a stranger in the city or elsewhere making the most of her or his mobile phone. It's as if mobile text messaging has transcended the status of being a mere trend. More to that, it has become an essential public utility, a basic service if you will, or somewhere close to that. My youngest brother, barely at the age of nine, knows very well how to use the cellphone, except that, still, he does not own one. But that does not exempt him either from being one of the countless people who use a taxed service. As for the older generation, well, it doesn't raise the hairs on my skin if I see one from that generation busy hammering the keypad with her or his fingers. There are millions more out there doing the same thing every waking hour or minute of their lives. I can only begin to imagine the sheer volume of text messages sent on a single day. I can only begin to imagine, too, the sheer amount of money being spent on these messages on a single day.
The point is that the government now sees the perfect opportunity to take a larger slice of the cake, at a time when more and more of us are using short messaging service, unlimited or otherwise. I understand the government needs revenues to further its duties to the public. What I do not understand is why the same government is ever willing to give when it is also ever determined to take away? Surely, others will say that the proposal to increase the tax collected from text messages will be shouldered not by the subscribers but by the companies, chipping off fractions from the income of these companies while leaving intact what subscribers have to pay. But surely, still, isn't it the same reason why companies of any kind are driven to either reduce the breadth of their services or increase the fees for the same? It is certainly the height of insanity, or of unreasonable madness, for a business thriving on what it does best to deprive itself of the very reason why it exists. It's there for the bread. It's there for the money. Reducing its blood source on its own is akin to assisting itself not to its own honorable harakiri or seppuku but to plain suicide. Whichever way you look at it, these service providers will still find ways to unburden itself, or to throw the burden completely at our shoulders.
This is far more than just the issue of taxing text messages to absurd lengths. The whole meat of this is the very thought of having representatives wanting to suck the life through our pores but leaving us to wonder where our taxes go. Le Cirque, perhaps? Or maybe a distant house somewhere in America, perhaps in Bay Area? Or closer to home, if not right smack at home, maybe in roads and bridges that have never seen the light of day? Or if they ever did, maybe in roads and bridges that already badly need major repairs long before they could even be completed, if they will ever be? Or maybe in a few tens of rubber boats waiting to serve the entire nation during times of weather calamities? The human beings in congress, or the lack thereof, can tell us exactly where all they want, but I'd gladly return a finger. As to which finger, that's entirely up to your imagination. I'd appreciate it if you prefer the middle.
It's not about getting the funds and where to get them. You won't get them if you're looking in all the wrong places at all the wrong times. It's about proper appropriation, or putting the money where it is truly needed, quite apart from putting our money to where their mouths are, stuffing them full if only to stop them from bickering and wasting themselves. Congress wants more money? Tell your boss to stop hauling her ass and all of yours to foreign countries for impractical reasons, like rubbing shoulders with foreign leaders in the hopes of their luster being passed on to you. That's bull, quite apart from shit. Congress wants more money? Tell yourselves to stop wasting the people's money during campaign season. We don't need your tarpaulins and posters to remind us that today is graduation day, or Christmas, or the fourteenth of February, or the feast day of a patron saint. You only need to tell us just exactly where the people's taxes go.
I remember the story of a former public servant, who also was a former nun, who gave up on paying taxes especially under this administration. Well, she may have also given up on god, but that's beside the point. The point is, she refused to pay her taxes because she wasn't convinced that she was getting what she was supposed to be paying for. To this day, no tax evasion case has yet been filed against her, but she says she is anticipating the day that the BIR will finally take notice that someone somewhere isn't paying something, or that they're missing a spot from the roll. She hopes they'll send her a demand letter soon enough. She also tends to her expansive garden, and she says that the only thing that the government can demand from her are her bitter gourds. And she'll send them flying over the fence the first moment they set foot on her property.
What can I say? You get what you deserve.
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