Our taxpaying VIPs

There is a gentleman from my community who must be well into his ‘80s. He was offered a lift two weeks ago as he limped under threatening weather along a challenging, undulating St Joseph street.

In his hands was a manila envelope of the size and type people take with them at times of important business.

Only this time it was an Inland Revenue Division “Notice of Assessment” for the payment of Property Tax. The envelope was bulging so there may have been associated documents – presumably identification and heaven knows what else.

Turns out he was on his way to the Tunapuna Piarco Administrative Complex, specifically the District Revenue Office, to pay the contentious Property Tax. “It is what citizens do,” he said proudly.

Given his age and physical condition, it may have been that he had had the option of completing an Application Form for Deferral of Assessed Tax as stipulated under Section 23 of the Property Tax Act on the grounds of “impoverished condition and … inability to improve … financial position significantly by reason of: age, impaired health (or) other special circumstances, that would create undue hardship.”

He is the kind of person who would know this. But he chose, instead, to do “what citizens do.” He did not know whether he needed to take cash with him or he could have used his bank card.

Fast-forward to last week and my turn. I thought all the while about my neighbour, whom I had not seen since his Property Tax trip. I was especially reminded of him when I realised that the elevator to the first floor of the building had (for years now I determined) remained “out of order.”

I strongly made my way up the stairs alongside three people who were quite clearly my seniors (and I am no spring chicken). “This place is not for old people,” one gentleman said. “Tell me about it,” I chimed in, purely for purposes of extending solidarity, of course.

When we got to the top of the stairway, we were greeted by a very polite security guard who directed us to a relatively short queue of about 10 people - average age 70, was my guess.

Uh oh, “Cash or Cheques Only”. My bad. I should have known. I should have checked. I wondered how Mr St Joseph had made out with his bank card.

So, off I went about 150 metres westward in the direction of the Tunapuna Market to the ATM. Would I have to use my karate skills on the way back to the Revenue Office with all that cash in my pocket? Are they serious about the “Exact Change” notice there? Do I have sufficient 20s? Do I need singles?

So, 300 metres later, I am back up those stairs alongside two slower moving dutiful, elderly citizens. The line was shorter now, but the day had started getting hot, and the location of that section means you line up under cover, but in an unenclosed setting. The air-conditioning that breaks down and “closes cash” for the day is inside where the clerks sit.

First, you go to a window to have your assessment “checked” and, following several clicks of a keyboard, you are handed another document with the same information as the assessment one. Do not pull out the cash … yet. Then, you leave the counter with these two documents containing the identical information and move to another line to pay.

In that line, people are whispering about doing all of this “on the computer.” Somebody steupsed. I kept quiet. I have written enough times about state failure/refusal to enter the digital age. I not saying nothing.

There I was with two pieces of paper containing the identical information and a handful of cash in my pocket, in a line, in the heat (what happens when it rains hard?), and a waterlogged piece of cardboard is blocking a window I imagine was designed for a third cashier.

A very courteous lady (whose face I cannot see) takes the cash, keeps the second piece of paper, loudly rubber stamps what turns out to be a third piece of paper, the receipt, and sends me on my way.

What a way, I thought, of handling the VIPs of this particular moment in our economic history! My neighbour, I quietly surmised, was more “VIP” than the people assigned special seating some public venues. Dutiful citizens are now more valuable, nationally, than the “VVIPs” at the various fetes.

How can an increasingly cash-strapped country, in search of enhanced revenue streams, treat some of its most important citizens, our real VIPs, so?