Will anyone be jailed for tax evasion?

Do you remember the words: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”?

It was thus Charles Dickens described one of those Axial periods of political and social tumult he lived through.

He could have been writing about TT today.

It makes me realise the enormous influence the media – spoken, electronic and written – have on how we live through and perceive our little patch of history when I try to understand it.

Have you noticed how mystical or transcendental (there has to be a word for it) commentary is becoming? When people, chalk up the media reports of floods, earthquakes, whole villages being swallowed by landslides, and social and political violence, violence, violence?

Not much wonder even non-religious people go around muttering: “Armageddon.”

As WB Yeates put it: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." And we have to wonder: is there a centre any more?

I hark back to a previous observation: when world civilisations are all simultaneously going through a period of transition, as it certainly appears is happening now, when the old, accustomed binary systems of thought and decision-making we were brought up to use and we thought guided governments in decision-making are being replaced by complex both/and unitive approaches, is there a centre? Is there a right and wrong? And is the billion-dollar media expenditure of Mr Trump influencing the standards of the world as we see it descending into chaos? Are we accepting what he is showing us: that there is no more either/or; no more either right or wrong; no more either lawful or unlawful, moral or immoral?

We have to grapple with both/and, and what you have always known is now touted as "false fact," and even the old interpersonal relations and interactions are not what they seem to be. Everywhere you look, you have to look again. Even Carnival has changed. The costumes that showed the world the brilliant design talents of Peter Minshall, Ken Morris and Wayne Berkeley are now deliberately deflected to invite the public to focus on the pudenda and nipples of young women with feathers on their backs. There is no art, no design other than bestowed by biology.

During a recent industrial relations workshop, a bitter complaint was made by one of the participants, who pinpointed one of the other factors in our culture that has been influenced by Trumpism: the totalitarian behaviour of a well-known leader whom I do not need to name. It doesn’t matter if he is a business leader, a political leader or a religious leader; totalitarianism, I realised, is becoming accepted here, as well as internationally, as the political and leadership "flavour of the year": "I am in the news, and If I say it is right, it is right.”

Media power. And it is more catching than a virus. Did you notice a few years ago when Mr Trump proudly boasted that he is so clever a businessman (he even set up that fake university that shortly crashed) that he knew how to avoid paying taxes, and that started a run on tax avoidance in TT as well?

When I did some research on it, I was told: “Don’t pretend to be so naive! There is nothing new about that! Didn’t you notice lawyers and doctors boast of never paying taxes, because their fees are either paid in cash or by personal cheque so they do not have to report them to Inland Revenue?"

I really was naive at the time, and I really didn’t know, but I recognised it as the old “Well, everybody does it” justification.

I found it hard to believe that those well-known professionals would break the law so openly, so I consulted a tax lawyer; and just for the record, I have since dealt with doctors who accept credit cards and pay taxes, and lawyers who work pro bono, so am withholding the research on the totalitarianism trend until next week.

But back to the tax theme, for those who wanted to know.

“Tax avoidance is defined as legal measures to use our tax regime to find ways to pay the lowest rate of tax, eg putting savings in the name of your partner to take advantage of their lower tax band."

Well, I didn’t have a partner with a lower tax band, so that didn’t help me, but I was faced with some very complex things, like the effect the new property tax will have on people, and why the first targeted payees are lowly home owners and not business property owners who run the country. And why it is a good idea to invest in a tax lawyer. (Hint: They are very expensive.)

“Tax evasion, however, is taking illegal steps to avoid paying tax, eg not declaring income to the taxman.” A lot of very low-income entrepreneurs and snow-cone vendors might get caught on that one, and may never cotton on to electronic currency, not even to avoid bandits.

You can go to jail for tax evasion in the US. That is what they jailed Al Capone for, and may put Mr Trump behind bars for But as far as I know, no one has ever gone to jail in TT for evading tax.

I wondered afterwards if the government was setting up the new Revenue Authority so that tax evasion could not happen; but I am not sure anyone wants the system to change.