Government shakedown of book readers continues
It’s not over.
In July this year President Macapagal-Arroyo tried to take credit for settling a problem she had allowed her own people to create. In her State of the Nation Address, Ms Arroyo virtuously declared that she intended to increase taxes on tobacco but the government should not be in the business of taxing minds. She was referring to her administration’s flirting with rogue-state status by violating the Florence Agreement and its accompanying Nairobi protocols.
The Philippines, from the Quirino administration onwards, had pledged to support an international policy promoting the duty-free entry of books. Until, that is, the Department of Finance decided it should put the squeeze on book lovers, in its eyes perhaps a minor source of new revenue, but still, a source to be squeezed like any other. . .
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
September 27th, 2009 at 01:40
Makes me wonder if Arroyo’s underlings are emboldened by collecting such tariffs because they got word from above to continue to do so…through back-channels.
How is it that taxes like this are arbitrarily imposed without any sort of public hearing or any other forum for the taxpayers to also air their grievances and objections out beforehand?