Free EFDs, with increased tax collection, let's also enjoy improved social services

BY EDITOR

16th December 2015.

Here is what to expect next time you go shopping, a receipt that lists all your purchases and then before you jump down to the total you should take a second to consider the formula used to reach that total, maybe you will be inspired to pay better attention to what your MP is doing to represent your rights; here is the basic formula, what you bought + 18%Tax= Total cost

Let’s start with the dictionary definition of tax; From the Latin ‘taxo’ to mean ‘rate’, tax is a financial charge or other levy imposed upon a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a state to fund various public expenditures. 

 

Failure to pay, or evasion of or resistance to taxation, is punishable by law. In other words, tax is a mandatory monetary sum paid to the government and failure to which results in legal action. 

 

Ok so, tax is a percentage of my money that I am forced to pay to the government, why. The second part of the definition has the answer; to fund various public expenditures. These include the very basics of life’s social services like supply of clean and safe water, access to reliable medical care and other health services, access to quality education, reliable supply of electricity, usable roads and other transport systems to mention but a few.How are taxes collected, a farmer in a remote village or construction worker in the town slums may ask? As indeed we all should.

 

The matter of tax collection brings us to types of taxes. Generally, taxes can be divided into two broad groups, direct and indirect tax.

 

Let’s start with the latter, for the unaware farmer, he is ignorant of the fact that he is levied indirect taxes at every turn, from the old hoe by which he irks his living out of a ground that is not always so giving, to the hybrid seeds that can’t be replanted after only one season.

 

He remains ill informed that the match box he uses to light his tobacco is taxed as is the cigarette, the collector will collect; as the US president Benjamin Franklin put it centuries ago, two things are certain, death and tax.

 

When taxes are so hidden, as is the case with sales taxes, the tax payer is hoodwinked because the tax is added up to the actual cost of the product and presented as one selling price.

 

Here I go on a limb, tired of shouldering the sales tax burden which drives selling prizes up and that way drives customers away, retailers should really embrace rather than resist the Electronic Fiscal Devices (EFDs) which now the government is giving free of charge to all eligible traders.

 

More than record your exact sales (information many a business would rather keep away from the tax collector) the receipt machine also shows the exact amount of sales tax levied on a product.

 

Armed with that weapon (that has seen many a regime fall) the business community and their customers have more say, a bargaining chip so to speak.

When the customer is informed of the amount of tax they pay with each and every purchase, then he or she garners morale to demand of the government reliable and accessible for social services.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN