Death and taxes

Some years ago I saw a banner outside the main gate of the Manila North Cemetery that read, “Welcome po kayo dito. Mayor Alfredo S. Lim.” I smiled and said to myself, “thanks, but I have no intention of going there just yet!” Nov. 1 has come and gone, our cemeteries have been spruced up and will be neglected till the next visit next year, one of the headline news has BIR Commissioner Kim Henares throwing the book at yet another individual who owes the government over a billion pesos in unpaid taxes. This bit of news released after the long weekend reminds us of Benjamin Franklin’s bittersweet quotation, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

The modern Filipino pays all sorts of taxes, income tax, real estate tax, value-added tax, residence tax, inheritance tax, etc. generating mountains of documentation waiting to be mined by a Filipino economic historian. While people keep receipts, they seldom record their sentiments about taxes and tax paying. Going through Rizal’s correspondence recently, I was drawn to a reference to taxes from his brother Paciano and his brother-in-law Manuel Herbosa. On May 26, 1883 Paciano narrated the following to Rizal, then a student in Madrid:

“This is the time to pay land rent at the Hacienda and contrary to the general custom they accept the money without issuing any receipt to anyone. Has this any relation to the important reforms of the general or is it nothing more than one of the arbitrary nets of the administrator? I’m more inclined to the latter one, though I would like it to be the former one.

“The country that is most burdened with taxes, in the opinion of various persons, is the Philippines, as much for the quota that partakes more of the poll tax than of the income tax. As for the method of collection in the provinces that in some cases costs the taxpayer double on account of travel expenses and the time involved. If it is entrusted to the gobernadorcillo or the agent of stamped papers, persons of responsibility, this heavy burden will be lightened. With a little confidence and some pity for the taxpayers, expense and time uselessly employed will be saved.”

Then as now it was an ordeal to pay taxes. Those who have to line up in a BIR office to file income tax wonder why payment cannot be made in a bank or Bayad Center and why should income tax payment have to be a needlessly painful exercise of our civic duty. On Aug. 29, 1886 “Maneng” Herbosa, husband of Rizal’s sister Lucia, write to complain about various land taxes:

“The tax! With regard to your question on this, the answer is very long, as it is the cause of the prevailing misery here. What I can write you will be only one-half of the story and even Dumas, senior, cannot exhaust the subject. Nevertheless, I’ll try to write what I can, though I may not be able to give a complete story, you may at least know half of it.

“Here there are many kinds of taxes. What they call irrigated rice land, even if it has no water, must pay a tax of 50 cavans of palay (unhusked rice). Land with 6 cavans of seed pay 5 pesos in cash. The land they call dry land that is planted to sugar cane, maize, and others pay different rates. Even if the agreed amount is 30 pesos for land with 6 cavans of seed, if they see that the harvest is good, they increase the tax, but they don’t decrease it, if the harvest is poor. There is land taxed 25 pesos or 20 pesos, according to custom.

“The most troublesome are the residential lots in town. There is no fixed rule that is followed, only their whim. Hence, even if it is only one span in size, if a stone wall is added, 50 pesos must be paid, the lowest being 20 pesos. But a nipa or cogon house pays only one peso for an area of ten fathoms square. Another feature of this system is that on the day you accept the conditions, the contract will be written which cannot be changed for four years, but the tax is increased every year. For these reasons, for two years now the payment of tax is confused and little by little the fear of the residents here of the word ‘vacant’ is being dispelled, which our ancestors had feared so much. The result is bargaining, like they do when buying fish. It is advisable to offer a low figure and payment can be postponed, unlike before when people were very much afraid to pay after May.

“Besides this, taxes on plants in fields far from the town, like the land in Pansol, are various. The tax on the palay is separate from the tax on maize, mongo, or garlic. There is no limit to this tax, for they fix it themselves. Since July no one buys sugar and since June locusts are all over the town and they are destroying palay and sugar cane. The governor gave 50 pesos to pay locust catchers, but when they took them to the town hall they were paid only 25 cents a cavan and a half; and it seems that the locusts are not decreasing. According to the estimate of the residents here only 300 cavans of locusts have been caught in this town. Many still remain. Though the governor has not sent any more money, the people have not stopped catching them.”

Weather and locusts affected crop yield, you have salaries to pay, bandits or tulisanes to fend off, then you face the inevitable—death and taxes.

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