Government Should Tax Weddings, Anniversaries and Love Affairs
- Category: The Comrade
- Date 13-06-2010
- 1082 views
During the week ended, governments in the East Africa announced national budgets to usher in a new fiscal year 2010/2011. Finance ministers Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, Clotilde Nizigama of Burundi, Syda Bbumba of Uganda, John Rwangombwa of Rwanda, and Mustafa Mkullo of Tanzania all promised a year of abundance for the common man. Poverty, hunger, disease and other public shortfalls will become a tale of times gone by – oh what a world!
The Comrade believes that national budget days are mere political rituals with trivial benefits for ordinary citizens. The purpose of a national budget is to honestly assess a nation’s available resources and needs and thus determine priorities and sacrifices to make to derive utmost benefits, even with measly resources. Our budgets are drawn with political perceptions, often aimed at giving the public false hopes. When do people ever recall the previous year’s budget so as to ask their government to account? Never!
Well, this may not be our business. If you ask, The Comrade would suggest a tax regime on some humdrum projects that involve a lot of cash transactions but little, if any, sacrifice on the part of the recipients. Think of a wedding ceremony. It has become a culture for couples to fleece relatives, friends, workmates, and other acquaintances simply because they want to get married. They will arrange a luxurious fiesta, far beyond their capacity to sponsor, and transfer the burden onto others.
You must delay payment for your child’s school dues, treatment for your mother’s sickness, and edifice for your private home to contribute funds for an extravagant wedding. How this contributes to the national economy is a question. It is different from a man or woman who gets a bank loan to start a business. Government does not encourage public contributions to such a person’s effort at all. It cannot ignore them so that businesses generate personal and national monies without difficulty. Rather, it will levy taxes as though to discourage business initiatives.
All the finance ministers should get red cards for such miscalculations. Let them tax wedding donations and gifts which couples amass without investing. Every couple that plans a luxurious wedding costing not less than a million shillings should also remit a percentage of their total budget to government so that more and more people in a poor country should think of investment, not lavishness. Plush weddings are a means of displaying personal wealth. Slack paupers and beggars have no business in this.
In spite of all pomp that attends to weddings nowadays, the rate of divorce and separation increases day-by-day. At their wedding, many couples are excited more about the public elation they will enjoy, not the commitment they would assume. Yet, business people tend to appreciate personal responsibilities and required sacrifices they would make for their businesses to succeed. No wonder that people rarely reject their businesses like men and women do their spouses. The Comrade believes that partners cheat on each other and marriages crumble because couples have little to lose in monetary terms since all they invested were mere feelings and emotions. Taxation could help intending couples take matrimony more seriously.
Other than being a way to contribute to national development, taxation should be used to discourage unproductive ventures that waste people’s resources, but are either expensive or harmful to personal and communal wellbeing. For instance, to discourage production or consumption of undesirable items such as polythene bags, high taxes are levied. To encourage consumption or utilisation of others such as computers and related accessories, taxes are reduced or waived.
It would make economic sense further for finance ministers to encourage individuals and families to make choices that promote their private welfare which feeds into national progress. Poor and uneducated people produce many children for example and contribute highly to national poverty and illiteracy. To promote the adoption of manageable families, government can impose a tariff per extra pregnancy after a couple’s third child. I hope Kikwete knows who the next finance minister should be.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: The Comrade, The Guardian on Sunday