Ayuda for the indolent from taxes of the overworked

Since our tax system is regressive, rather than progressive, most taxpayers consider taxation as a burden, a penalty for working hard and earning more, while the lazy, the inept, the indolent, and the social parasites get monthly ayuda and all forms of social amelioration for doing nothing.

In this country, the rich and the super-rich can easily get multiple tax shields and many mechanisms and contrivances for tax avoidance and tax evasions. These are wealthy business taipans who get protection by high-powered accountants and tax lawyers who are able to manipulate the tax code and create juridical personalities that could shield multi-billionaires from the financial burdens of taxation. The powerful and highly-influential politicians reportedly have much undeclared income taken from the coffers of government, in the forms of intelligence funds, confidential funds, and even flood control and calamity funds.

They do not pay taxes when they dip their dirty fingers into these funds and use them to their hearts' delight. No one can tax hundreds of millions of public funds that are given to powerful politicians who are granted many perks and privileges by their heads of office like multiple millions of Christmas bonuses. Government financial institutions including the Central Bank, SSS, GSIS, PhilHealth, Pag-Ibig are being run by highly-paid executives with too many club memberships and foreign travels, and they are able to escape taxation by making it appear that these are operational expenses which many only support with peremptory acknowledgment receipts and symbolic liquidation reports.

And so, in this country, the super-rich and the super-powerful are able to escape taxation. The poor and the very poor also do not have to worry about taxes because most of them are tax-exempt. By ratio and proportion, about 60% of the 117 million Filipinos do not pay taxes including the minimum wage earners. Let us just say that the rich and the ultra-rich constitute roughly 10% of the population. That leaves the overtaxed, underpaid, and overworked 30% constituting the middle class.

These are the people who carry the heavy burdens of funding the government and financing the billions in ayuda given to the lazy and the indolent parasites. These are the people whose salaries get from 25% to 33% withheld income tax. Their employers can use a long array of tax shields and many mechanisms and tactics at avoiding taxation or evading taxes. The law-abiding citizens are being taxed when they buy consumer goods; they are even charged high tariffs for imported materials and equipment. The good ones are always punished and the creative law breakers laugh their way to the banks.

The scheming scoundrels and scalawags among the dishonest businessmen and traders, in connivance with the rascals in sensitive agencies, are able to smuggle goods and bring in foreign items immune from tariffs and taxes. It is the greatest irony of life in a secular and materialistic world, that those who want to follow what is right are the ones who are made to carry the cross and at the end still be crucified. The Judases, Dimases, and Estases get rewarded with perks and privileges. How can we have a happy Yuletide with such an institutionalized travesty?