Not paying taxes but seeking free services

THE EDITOR: It must really be nice to have your own private ATM machine – especially one that comes with a pulse. I’m talking about the Government’s never-ending supply of citizens who are forced to pay income tax by default at source.

I said “forced” because entirely too many “citizens” never bother to pay anything to the taxman for the upkeep of their country, yet are the first ones to rush to hospitals for free medical care, send their children to school for free education, and complain about the roads and lack of various other amenities, despite the fact they pay nothing to help maintain/upkeep these services.

During the height of the covid19 lockdown the Board of Inland Revenue’s deadline for paying taxes, April 30, came and went. While people were so busy adhering to the Government’s stern admonitions to “stay home,” “don't go anywhere,” yet dedicated citizens were expected to brave the portending disease and venture into Port of Spain to pay our taxes?

I missed that deadline by a couple of days and when I did finally took in my payment I was hit with a penalty charge for late filing. And if I didn’t have the penalty interest I was to be charged interest on that too – interest upon interest.

Yet those who paid or did not even attempt to pay anything were still there quarrelling the loudest for doubles vendors and bars to remain open during the early days of the pandemic.As far I know the threshold for paying income tax is earnings of $72,000 annually – that’s $6,000 a month. I worked out that if a vendor (doubles, market, fruit), taxi driver, whoever, worked a mere 20 days a month, that monthly $6,000 would break down to around $300 a day. That’s 60 doubles (without drinks), about six full carloads for a taxi driver to Diego Martin, a couple dozen pounds of bananas and apples for the ubiquitous fruit vendors and roughly 35 packs of honey-roasted nuts for those nuts men hustling on the highways.

Are we really to believe that the above-mentioned people do not make those small sale figures a day? Nonsense, of course they do – and much more. But still the vocal minority continues to lobby for us not to implement the Revenue Authority and collect the taxes due to the country from their proceeds. If you object, the cry is always, “We is poor people, we just hustling to mind we chirren!” So tax-paying workers have no children or expenses?

What an unfortunate thing that many of us like to work in offices and air-conditioned showrooms, eh. If not, we could all quit and become street vendors and public transport drivers and escape the tax net and live happily ever after and “mind we chirren.”

I wonder if these people would make noise when the social services dry up because the Government can’t get its hands of any of our forced taxes at source?

DR Z NIMA

Woodbrook