Highly Earning, Nontaxable Jobs in Town
- Category: Peering Eye
- Date 14-11-2004
- 596 views
Someone was doing his business but used my ignorance to earn profits. He made me hire a car for three hours on the understanding that he would show me a house to rent in the plush suburbs of the city whereas he had several personal places and people to visit. At every stop, he would advise, “Please wait here as I talk to the landlady, the landlord etc” before we would move on miles away again. In the end I paid him a huge allowance for messing up my day.
Tanzania Revenue Authority and the City Council should enlist a tax assessment consultant to identify all taxable businesses and ensure that they are indiscriminately, taxed without fear or favour. I propose that Peering Eye takes the job because we have today noticed that highly lucrative businesses are ignored and go untaxed, whereas miserable, unprofitable ones such biscuits hawkers and traders in makeshift squalid shops are taxed to the marrow.
Many such unfortunate traders have failed and been forced to return to their villages. Yet the tax system is expected to be fair enough to encourage business enterprise and comprehensive to cover all business categories.
One business that has effectively evaded all taxation is the dalali enterprises. These are brokers for residential houses who are stationed all over the city and conducting very brisk, risk-free business, walking away each day with a full pocket of cash. The brokers are everywhere if you want them, with their official business premises by the roadsides - on verandahs or in tree-shades.
Their signposts inexpertly written - often shabbily scribbled as if by preschool infants trying out their undeveloped writing skills – are printed on trees, planks, or pieces of iron sheets and hung wherever the dalali spend their days. There need not be a house for the business premises, as that would mean paying rent and affecting the profits.
The estate agents usually sit drinking coffee, smoking, playing chess, gossiping, and listening to music from a nearby shop/pub or pushcart cassette seller. Some are often times seen sitting in the scorching sun all day long and suspiciously seminude in their sleeveless tee shirts. You would think they are criminal idlers to be bungled in court and charged with “being idle and disorderly”.
Their only business investment is to buy a mobile phone. To contact the dalali, you may find out from the classified free-of-charge announcements in the newspapers where they post their telephone numbers, which may be repeated for both existing and non-existing houses available for renting. Yet they do not need to buy the newspaper much as they may not have to be literate or able to speak English. Just get a used newspaper, cut out the form, and ask someone to fill it for you.
To see a house, you must part with a minimum of T.shs5000/= and that multiplies with the number of the houses visited though they may have been rented already. In the scathingly hot Dar weather, the dalali might make you walk with him for miles, knocking at doors of several gates, to hear the house was occupied last week, yesterday, this morning, an hour ago, anything! Then, your guide might require that you hire a taxi to ride allover the city to a house in a sorry state, and you pay him for showing it to you.
Whenever you come across an acceptable house and decide to rent it, the dalali must get an allowance equivalent of one month rent i.e. you pay for 13 months if you rent it for a year - he will take T.shs400.000/= if that is the rent for one month.
The house owner must too part with a commission, which I cannot gauge, not being a landlord. It must be a good amount though, given the brokers’ negotiation skills. In a good week, the dalali may bag two million shillings; nontaxable income.
When you occupy the house, the good dalali will keep in touch with you by visiting or telephone, especially when in need of money, to ascertain if you are comfortable with your accommodation. The interaction will end with a request for help or to lend some money and this is normally granted, considering that you are dealing with someone who knows all the corners of your residence.
Of course, there are risks involved. When looking for a house, the dalali knows and will tell you all the details of the house to the minutest detail, inside-out. They have unlimited access to all such houses, from room to room, to such a point that the privacy of the house is laid bare. Should anyone suspect you of possessing loot-able valuables, it could be pretty easy to lead the gang to all the corners of the house.
With all these advantages at his disposal, the dalali business should be assessed and taxed accordingly. Because why not?
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Peering Eye, Sunday Citizen