Bureau of Customs (BOC) is taunted as a revenue generating agency, a supposed contributor to the national treasury. In reality, the BOC as an inutile herd of swine, awaiting the date of their final trip to the abbatoir.
Nowhere in the world can you find highest executives of The Customs agency that will say this:
● We are powerless here in this agency.
● The smugglers, smuggling syndicate dictate every move that we make.
● We are only able to do what the smugglers approve. If they oppose, we cannot make our move.
● We are not even allowed to use a Radio Communications net in the agency, anywhere in the port, or wherever the Bureau of Customs is conducting its official or side duties. (That is the least of the restrictions imposed by the syndicates engaged in highly illegal activities in the country's coastal cities and towns.)
If that is the case, the two functions of the Bureau of Customs: regulatory - enforcement and recording - registry, are patently useless. It leaves all of us in a sizable quandary about whether there is any reason at all for the agency to keep getting paid with the hard earned money of the people.
The Bureau of Customs and the Bureau of Immigration are the first, and the last, lines of defense of the country.
At the very same time, they are also the face of the state in many dealings and encounters with subjects from the rest of the world. With the Bureau of Customs being a crippled and inutile agency, we can only begin to imagine what kind of relations they are building with our neighbors? Surely enough these relations cannot and never be positive in whatever sense.
On the other hand, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is supposed to be the bastion of the state's police power to exact the contributions of its subjects for the national good.
For a long time, this has not been happening, will not happen and may never at all happen, despite the posturings of the head of that agency of showing herself / himself as a gun-toting hoodlum aiming to shoot at some target.
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The Collections Commissioners. Madam Kim Henares - Bureau of Internal Revenue.
Mr. John "Sunshine / Sunny" Sevilla - Bureau of Customs.
The enemy of the state in this case, not excluding the smugglers, illegal establishments, criminals, con personalities and terrorists, ad hominem that do not pay their taxes - are the top echelon of the economic pyramid that controls the country's wealth but provide a mere pittance to the public sector in terms of taxes.
Unlike most certainly many of the opulent in countries like Taiwan, Korea, Japan, United States, where tax payments are strictly enforced, the vaunted police powers of the state are laid to waste with mindless grandstanding by the BIR chief of running after champion pugilist Rep. Manuel Pacquiao for earnings that are already tax-deducted in the United States where most of his income derives from.
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Conversely, the so-called elite that nourish not even an iota of nationalist fervor at all, cheat the government all the time and bribe their way to complete freedom from being subjected to the police power of the state to collect booty for the public coffers.
The preponderance of skill and quasi-skills, not art, nor science of doctoring income tax documents has bred the culture of tax vitatio or a conviction of vitare solutio tributi (avoid paying taxes) or vitare nullo modo pendere statum (do not pay the state by all means).
Nowadays, these criminal minded entities have gone into the act of teaching how to cheat income taxes event-managed, highly outrageous hotel and executive function room-held seminars, symposia, and all that ersatz gimmicks-loaded marketing. Just so to propagate even further non-payment of taxes to the government. The criminal minded and the criminal non-payers clearly have each other to keep. A shameful lot of money is saved in between them.
So the benefits to the state are therefore not provided, but those that bridge the obligated and the state, prosper. In turn, the state cannot service the people whom it must nurture. In many ways dissimilar to neighboring countries that give subsidies for telecommunications, build sufficient or extra large infrastructure that have the capability to offer surplus electric power for both the poor and all the other sectors of society in the Philippines the government allows the people to suffer from power shortage.
The masses are bled dry from excessive charges that only profit the owners of telecommunications companies - whereas from the 1980s in Taiwan for instance - one can set up a small office and spend hours on the telephone calling long distance without paying horrendous costs of communications. However, that small entrepreneur, the farmers and all the rest, dutifully fulfill their obligation of paying their taxes to the Taiwanese government correctly.
It will be difficult to find very highly paid and affluent skilled and semi-skilled accountants numbering by the hundred thousands in Taiwan or even Fujian, China. The best possible destination for these workers is the Philippines where they can fool and defraud the Philippine government and rob the people of the Philippines of the rightful public sector revenue.
Syphillitic Relations with the Rest of the World
The trauma-inducing claim at the Bureau of Customs of over-stocking of container vans, is not only a loss to all the stakeholders as publicly lamented that no less than Philippine Pesos Seventy Billion (PHP70-B) was lost due to the overflowing volume of container vans in the Bureau of Customs warehouses and the container port.
Unlike most certainly many of the opulent in countries like Taiwan, Korea, Japan, United States, where tax payments are strictly enforced, the vaunted police powers of the state are laid to waste with mindless grandstanding by the BIR chief of running after champion pugilist Rep. Manuel Pacquiao for earnings that are already tax-deducted in the United States where most of his income derives from.
Conversely, the so-called elite that nourish not even an iota of nationalist fervor at all, cheat the government all the time and bribe their way to complete freedom from being subjected to the police power of the state to collect booty for the public coffers.
The preponderance of skill and quasi-skills, not art, nor science of doctoring income tax documents has bred the culture of tax vitatio or a conviction of vitare solutio tributi (avoid paying taxes) or vitare nullo modo pendere statum (do not pay the state by all means).
Nowadays, these criminal minded entities have gone into the act of teaching how to cheat income taxes event-managed, highly outrageous hotel and executive function room-held seminars, symposia, and all that ersatz gimmicks-loaded marketing. Just so to propagate even further non-payment of taxes to the government. The criminal minded and the criminal non-payers clearly have each other to keep. A shameful lot of money is saved in between them.
So the benefits to the state are therefore not provided, but those that bridge the obligated and the state, prosper. In turn, the state cannot service the people whom it must nurture. In many ways dissimilar to neighboring countries that give subsidies for telecommunications, build sufficient or extra large infrastructure that have the capability to offer surplus electric power for both the poor and all the other sectors of society in the Philippines the government allows the people to suffer from power shortage.
The masses are bled dry from excessive charges that only profit the owners of telecommunications companies - whereas from the 1980s in Taiwan for instance - one can set up a small office and spend hours on the telephone calling long distance without paying horrendous costs of communications. However, that small entrepreneur, the farmers and all the rest, dutifully fulfill their obligation of paying their taxes to the Taiwanese government correctly.
It will be difficult to find very highly paid and affluent skilled and semi-skilled accountants numbering by the hundred thousands in Taiwan or even Fujian, China. The best possible destination for these workers is the Philippines where they can fool and defraud the Philippine government and rob the people of the Philippines of the rightful public sector revenue.
Syphillitic Relations with the Rest of the World
The trauma-inducing claim at the Bureau of Customs of over-stocking of container vans, is not only a loss to all the stakeholders as publicly lamented that no less than Philippine Pesos Seventy Billion (PHP70-B) was lost due to the overflowing volume of container vans in the Bureau of Customs warehouses and the container port.
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The problem is ridiculous.Container vans mostly spend their time traveling around the world. For intelligent, adequate and responsible state authorities, these items may be allowed to spend some time on land but their real value is when they are on board ships and bringing goods from one port to another. With these the harmless container vans bring in revenue, profits and therefore taxes.
But this equation does not tally with the math of Mr. Sevilla and his fellow appointees at the Bureau of Customs, who abide by the dictates of syndicated operators on how to compute the numbers for each day until Thursday and Friday when the grease monies start rolling into palms of the highly privileged receivers of magnanimous tributes.
Since the time the President, Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III sat in Malacañang, the movement of business has been ultra-slow. The grease and pretend tax payments equivalent to under-the-table-payment of slightly over Forty Thousand Philippine Pesos (PHP40,000) per container to allow the release of said, has ballooned to more than One Hundred Thousand Philippine Pesos (PHP100,000) so that no smugglers have been lifting their fingers to conduct their illicit business at the ports. This is called the "Tara".
Legitimate shippers on the other hand, even though they have proper documents cannot pay the bribe plus pseudo-taxes particularly now that the rule has been laid down that said "Tara" may reach up to half a million "depending upon the real worth of the goods inside the container."
Were it so that all of plus or minus Five Hundred Thousand Philippine Pesos (+ - PHP500,000) will go to the coffers of the government, that will be kindly to the people of the country. However, no one knows how PHP400,000 or PHP500,000 will be treated once it changes hands from the owner of the goods to the people at the BOC. No one at the BOC nowadays is ever worthy of any kind of trust at all.
As all of these heavy-duty money making is going on at the revenue centers of the government and a myriad of problems beset the country due to the incompetence and deliberately determined neglect of the administration, one of the most affected aspects of the life of this country is its relations with the world community of nations.
When Mr. Aquino allowed the Quirino Grandstand Hostage Crisis to happen, the farcical drama of the invasion of Malaysia by a band of misfit pirates as in the movies, the resolute murder by omission of the poor people of Tacloban City and other localities affected by Yolanda, the Zamboanga City Siege, among so many other incredibly stupendous faux pas, together with the killing of commerce and trade at the container ports and playing God with his syndicate mob's rivals by exhausting the tremendous powers of the government at his disposal to literally crush the perceived enemy, this man and his underlings have shamed the Philippines and reduced the standing of the country in the eyes of the world.
Whereas there are enormous ways of curing the problem of the subservience of the Bureau of Customs to criminals and terrorists, the collusion and connivance between the Bureau of Internal Revenue and unimaginative, skilled workers called accountants working for moneyed entities, despite and in spite of the make-believe policy of transparency called "Matuwid na Daan" (straight path) nothing will be done.
With greater revenues, a large number of projects can be completed under Mr. Aquino's regime. Most services, foreign loan or debt remittances need not be too much a burden - particularly since the trend for many creditors is debt write-offs; condonation; forgiven remaining, outstanding balances.
While it is true that such a move may be impossible to make on the part of the regime of Mr. Aquino considering that his finance secretary is a protege of one of the skill-ful workers that doctor income taxes and steal with fierce impunity from government - Mr. Washington Sycip, still, a great amount of pressure can make the regime be conscienticized from within the ranks of the government itself.
The ugly signs of the monster has been rearing its head when it became known how workers in the disaster assistance sector have gradually been kicked out of their jobs due to lack of financial support from the very government expected to take care of them so in turn they can take care of the people when calamitous tragedy strikes. Recently, the head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) is complaining he has no money to pay employees. How on earth can a government - if not of stone-faced thieves and criminals - be able to afford to pretend to be doling out what was initially just more than One Billion Philippine Pesos (PHP1-B) under a so-called Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program is bloating and bloating relentlessly until it reaches the equivalent of the magic figure of One Billion United States Dollars (USD1-B).
The CCT purports to be paying millions of poor people for not doing anything, but simply being poor and yet the disaster workers that number only less than four hundred cannot be allocated the sum for their salaries.
The unbelievably tiny and insignificant NDRRMC issue and similar cases like these are small and isolated islands in the sea of mishaps and horrifying bumblings by the regime of Mr. Aquino. These do not considerably create dents and kinks in the Philippines' diplomatic, economic, or other vital relations with foreign nations.
Yet the government continues to keep entreating the people with the motherhood statements and pop song-style repetitive speech lines of Mr. Aquino who most cluelessly sticks to his sophomoric, dense and painfully inadequate speech writers. Those that have written speeches for several past presidents loudly complain that the tirades and lecturing, kindergarten oratory of Mr. Aquino are not worth archiving in the annals of the country. Simply because those speeches are sheer garbage.
Since the government incorrigibly shares and maintains the present devil-may-care attitude that "let all be damned as long as I do what I want, say what I want, cry when I want, date when I want, I am Noynoy the President after all," even with little time left before the final curtain call, there will be foot dragging over the problem at the Bureau of Customs and no one will dare to rock the boat at the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
Who needs development from taxes? The people manning the "Matuwid" jeepney and their leader need the skim, so away with the taxes and a big LOLOLOL to the poor for expecting decent services. In the meantime, these behavior and beliefs degrade the closeness and bonds of the people of the Philippines and those of other races and nationalities.
But this equation does not tally with the math of Mr. Sevilla and his fellow appointees at the Bureau of Customs, who abide by the dictates of syndicated operators on how to compute the numbers for each day until Thursday and Friday when the grease monies start rolling into palms of the highly privileged receivers of magnanimous tributes.
Since the time the President, Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III sat in Malacañang, the movement of business has been ultra-slow. The grease and pretend tax payments equivalent to under-the-table-payment of slightly over Forty Thousand Philippine Pesos (PHP40,000) per container to allow the release of said, has ballooned to more than One Hundred Thousand Philippine Pesos (PHP100,000) so that no smugglers have been lifting their fingers to conduct their illicit business at the ports. This is called the "Tara".
Legitimate shippers on the other hand, even though they have proper documents cannot pay the bribe plus pseudo-taxes particularly now that the rule has been laid down that said "Tara" may reach up to half a million "depending upon the real worth of the goods inside the container."
Were it so that all of plus or minus Five Hundred Thousand Philippine Pesos (+ - PHP500,000) will go to the coffers of the government, that will be kindly to the people of the country. However, no one knows how PHP400,000 or PHP500,000 will be treated once it changes hands from the owner of the goods to the people at the BOC. No one at the BOC nowadays is ever worthy of any kind of trust at all.
As all of these heavy-duty money making is going on at the revenue centers of the government and a myriad of problems beset the country due to the incompetence and deliberately determined neglect of the administration, one of the most affected aspects of the life of this country is its relations with the world community of nations.
When Mr. Aquino allowed the Quirino Grandstand Hostage Crisis to happen, the farcical drama of the invasion of Malaysia by a band of misfit pirates as in the movies, the resolute murder by omission of the poor people of Tacloban City and other localities affected by Yolanda, the Zamboanga City Siege, among so many other incredibly stupendous faux pas, together with the killing of commerce and trade at the container ports and playing God with his syndicate mob's rivals by exhausting the tremendous powers of the government at his disposal to literally crush the perceived enemy, this man and his underlings have shamed the Philippines and reduced the standing of the country in the eyes of the world.
Whereas there are enormous ways of curing the problem of the subservience of the Bureau of Customs to criminals and terrorists, the collusion and connivance between the Bureau of Internal Revenue and unimaginative, skilled workers called accountants working for moneyed entities, despite and in spite of the make-believe policy of transparency called "Matuwid na Daan" (straight path) nothing will be done.
With greater revenues, a large number of projects can be completed under Mr. Aquino's regime. Most services, foreign loan or debt remittances need not be too much a burden - particularly since the trend for many creditors is debt write-offs; condonation; forgiven remaining, outstanding balances.
While it is true that such a move may be impossible to make on the part of the regime of Mr. Aquino considering that his finance secretary is a protege of one of the skill-ful workers that doctor income taxes and steal with fierce impunity from government - Mr. Washington Sycip, still, a great amount of pressure can make the regime be conscienticized from within the ranks of the government itself.
The ugly signs of the monster has been rearing its head when it became known how workers in the disaster assistance sector have gradually been kicked out of their jobs due to lack of financial support from the very government expected to take care of them so in turn they can take care of the people when calamitous tragedy strikes. Recently, the head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) is complaining he has no money to pay employees. How on earth can a government - if not of stone-faced thieves and criminals - be able to afford to pretend to be doling out what was initially just more than One Billion Philippine Pesos (PHP1-B) under a so-called Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program is bloating and bloating relentlessly until it reaches the equivalent of the magic figure of One Billion United States Dollars (USD1-B).
The CCT purports to be paying millions of poor people for not doing anything, but simply being poor and yet the disaster workers that number only less than four hundred cannot be allocated the sum for their salaries.
The unbelievably tiny and insignificant NDRRMC issue and similar cases like these are small and isolated islands in the sea of mishaps and horrifying bumblings by the regime of Mr. Aquino. These do not considerably create dents and kinks in the Philippines' diplomatic, economic, or other vital relations with foreign nations.
Yet the government continues to keep entreating the people with the motherhood statements and pop song-style repetitive speech lines of Mr. Aquino who most cluelessly sticks to his sophomoric, dense and painfully inadequate speech writers. Those that have written speeches for several past presidents loudly complain that the tirades and lecturing, kindergarten oratory of Mr. Aquino are not worth archiving in the annals of the country. Simply because those speeches are sheer garbage.
Since the government incorrigibly shares and maintains the present devil-may-care attitude that "let all be damned as long as I do what I want, say what I want, cry when I want, date when I want, I am Noynoy the President after all," even with little time left before the final curtain call, there will be foot dragging over the problem at the Bureau of Customs and no one will dare to rock the boat at the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
Who needs development from taxes? The people manning the "Matuwid" jeepney and their leader need the skim, so away with the taxes and a big LOLOLOL to the poor for expecting decent services. In the meantime, these behavior and beliefs degrade the closeness and bonds of the people of the Philippines and those of other races and nationalities.
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It is hoped that the advancements in current scientific biomedic research will truly happen. There might be a time when the benefits of medicine and pharmacology will be critically important to the well-being of the country, as the government simply keeps allowing the relations of the Philippines and rest of the world to deteriorate to severely syphillitic, gonorrheaic and HIV-AIDS like proportions whereas the original diagnosis of the disease being spread by the good Mister's family and circle of close friends was only at the level of Chlamydia complexed with Electra syndrome.
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