Paying for my father’s sins via State’s ten per cent

By Ted Malanda

Sometimes, I feel like I have been working for the government all my life. In one month, what the government takes from in taxes is more money than I give my father in six years.

And that is a scandal because that old man spent cash that he didn’t have to educate me; money he could have used to pay dowry for three chubby brides and installed a tidy harem on his one-acre farm.

The government, on the other hand, never spent a farthing on me when I was growing up, apart from that nasty measles jab that stung like hell. On the contrary, it did everything to stop him from educating me by taxing him like hell.

And when he retired, and the government realised they couldn’t tax him anymore, they were so furious with him that they began working on me, on the basis that a son shall pay for the sins of his father. At 19 years of age, when I was still too young to have sex or drink beer, the government started taxing the miserly Sh1,325 that I earned as an untrained teacher at St Columbus Secondary School in Nakuru.  

They have been bleeding me dry since. If they refunded all the money they have eaten from me, I would buy a three-bedroom house in Nairobi, hitch up a bride and install a pretty second wife in the servant’s quarters — dowry paid upfront in cash — and some chicken in the backward.

Microbes

Note, however, that we have yet to factor in VAT — Value Added Tax, that monster that nibbles on your income like a mouse. When you buy a blanket, the government eats VAT. When you buy medicine, the government chews VAT. When your wipe your bottom, the government burps on VAT. Heck, if you dropped dead today, the government would ensure to munch the last VAT from your, via the cost of your coffin, before microbes reduce you to dust.

I know the government gives something in return, like that roofless school in Ukambani that reduced former Central Bank governor Micah Cheresem to tears. But if you woke up today and discovered that your kidney is behaving like a teacher who needs a pay rise, run to India, not a government hospital, even if you have been paying taxes diligently for 30 years. 

To be fair, it’s not always gloom, and if you watch carefully, you can see your money working. When government delegations wander through foreign countries on ‘fact-finding’ missions and educational trips, be proud.

When you see big men and women leaving their offices and boardrooms in Nairobi to go and ‘workshop’ in Mombasa, be proud because your elected leaders are representing you, having a holiday on your behalf. 

But those junkets cost money, much more than the VAT from toilet paper brings. So enter ten per cent. Henceforth, when you pay your shylock, the government, like a corrupt politician, will eat something small from that transaction.

When you send ransom via M-pesa to the people who hijacked your wife, the government will chew a bit of it. And if you want pay hire goons to kill your husband, remember the government will need to munch ten per cent of that financial transaction.