Seven o’clock and the revenue district office at Calamba City was already packed with taxpayers. More were still coming, folders tucked into their arms, silently announcing they were here for serious business. The sun was up, and so was the heat of quibbling from people taking turns to get in. The ticket to the building is a TIN verification slip. Everybody gets general admission here, except for a few senior citizens, a pregnant woman, and a nun. They were allowed to take the fast lane to the client support section on the second floor while I waited in the lobby with the rest of the growing crowd. It was a Monday.
“The system is offline,” the guard kept repeating to arriving clients at the door as if to convince them to leave and come again later. I didn’t mind, nor did the other contractual workers who were here to renew their registration and avoid penalties.
Something about the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) makes me wish I was a more virtuous person. Everything here seemed to test every human sensibility I lacked. And every time someone in line gets annoyed or enraged, ready to snap at the guard, I try very hard to hide my own frustration. I could be that person, too, at any moment—but, of course, not today. I still need to get my transaction done—this could put me in jail if I don’t.
Six years of unclosed accounts, that’s the reason why I got into this situation. Six years of unclosed accounts I never knew existed. The details of my ignorance are as follows: I got my first job as a research assistant at a university in 2016. I just got my degree, and believe me, if you are not smart enough to get a full scholarship, earning a college education will make you broke. That’s true, at least for me. So, I immediately took the first employment offer from my professor, applied for a TIN, signed my five-month job contract, wrote the nine-digit TIN on it, and clocked in at 8 o’clock the next day. It was a nice job that paid decent. Always delayed but still decent.
However, getting a delayed salary also meant filing late at the BIR. I incurred penalties after penalties, and a quarter of my earnings only went to taxes. Soon, I decided to find a regular job in a private company that pays on time and would handle my taxes for me. Luckily, I found one. But there was one problem. Out of eagerness to start my new job in a new city, I didn’t realize that my previous registration remained unclosed. I had no idea how tax compliance works, but, I swear, my five years in college did not prepare me for this. No one from the revenue district office informed me either. Again, it took me six years to realize I could be penalized for something I didn’t know. I was horrified.
I don’t want to be in prison at 28. I never killed anyone. I never do drugs. I never put a house on fire. But with a criminal offense on the grounds of tax noncompliance, I thought I had just committed an arson attack on my future, and now all my dreams were crumbling into ashes. And I don’t think my mother telling me she would pay me a visit in jail helped make me feel better.
After nights of self-pitying and overthinking and mustering up courage, there I was at the revenue district office on that Monday morning, ready to pay for the compromise to close my accounts. But, what I thought was a one-day transaction turned out to be four. There were four floors I had to thrash back and forth, up and down; four sections I had to get signatures and approval from; and four trips to the bank to pay for my penalties (not to mention the countless copies of forms I had to fill out and the number of runs I took to the photocopying center). Back there, I thought four was cursed. Especially during that one afternoon when I had to dash some 400 meters to reach the bank at 4 p.m., only to be stopped by the security at the door. “Closed na po,” he said. I pleaded, almost giving up. “Sorry, Ma’am, offline na po,” he insisted.
I moved to the corner and cried. I leaned on a white wall, the closest comfort I could find in an empty parking lot. The security soon came up to me and asked if I was all right, to which I said yes, even if my yes meant I was so tired and broke, and I just needed these tears to come out. He advised me to come early the next day to proceed with my bank transactions. I said “Okay,” but nothing on my face said I was. I looked down, feeling defeated, and saw my worn-out sneakers with both soles dangling and falling apart. The state bureaucracy has failed me again, and now I was left with a pair of broken shoes. Great! I called my mother and told her about my misadventures. I heard her laughing on the other end, telling me to cheer up. The stubborn me cried some more.
I had paid all my penalties at the revenue district office by Thursday. I wasn’t put in jail, thankfully. Yet, as I slowly passed a detour on my way home, I saw a huge public advisory flashing by the roadside reminding me, “This is where your taxes go.” I smirked, trying to get over the thought that the taxes I paid might just be used to excavate a fully functional road, only to be rebuilt for a few hundred million pesos more, and delay someone else’s commute.
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Christele Jao Amoyan, 28, is currently unemployed. She knew getting this essay published would make her a thousand pesos richer, but not quite since 10 percent of it would still go to taxes.