A Mobile State

The authorities have invented taxes for just about anything and authorized even private entrepreneurs to collect dues.

All right, I'm not going to throw away my mobile phone because a 100 dinar monthly tax has been imposed as the company pays my bill anyway. I don't know anybody who's going to stop driving a car because the authorities have found a way to make some money on vehicle owners too. Bozidar Milacic, the Serbian Finance Minister, denied that taxes on using the Internet and satellite dishes would be imposed too.

Thus the government prevented its fall by refusing to climb skyscrapers and allocate all the satellite dishes in Belgrade, while I saved money on my children's desire to surf the Internet infinitely. However, the door is still open; why shouldn't satellite dishes and the Internet be subject to tax too, just like singles, families without children, pets, mothers-in-law and weapons. Satellite dishes could be very profitable, because a whole lot of people might decide to buy them after so many of our own media have been shut down.
The tax policy based on the logic "100 dinars here and 200 bucks there", has been adopted to take money away from people doing something in this country, who are reluctant to state their real incomes so that they can keep some of it to survive. The state's excuse for its policy is that these people want to rip off pensioners and pregnant women.
The government knows only too well that many enterprises would have gone out of business long ago had they been paying their employees through regular channels. That is why some kind of a tacit agreement has been made that everybody can cheat a bit while the state will turn a blind eye a bit.

However, this short-sightedness will bring both the state and its impoverished population to a dead end. There is a bit of a shop-keeping logic in this policy; the difference is that a shopkeeper can't force a customer to buy in his shop, while the state does have the means to force the population to pay taxes on items that appear luxurious from the core of our misery - telephones, cars, guns, pets and other more or less basic necessities.

This kind of tax policy drove Robin Hood to the woods back in his day, and triggered the French Revolution when taxes on windows were invented. Without any realistic sources of collecting tax, the authorities will have to keep inventing items and services subject to tax. The decision to tax mobile telephones was brought on a very thin line, ignoring the feeling of those who own mobile phones that they couldn't imagine life without these appliances.

Why shouldn't the state tax white sugar with the excuse that brown sugar is much healthier? History teaches us that there are no limits to the tax collectors' imagination. We shouldn't be surprised if this tax system starts to multiply progressively, as there won't be many more mobile phones in the future but the authorities will always need a lot of tax money to fill the budget holes. We shouldn't be surprised if we start paying taxes on regular phones, as we always have the option of passing on the message face to face if it really is important.

Private entrepreneurs will most definitely join this vicious circle, dividing the state and its citizens. The only way to force people to pay 100 dinars extra for their mobile phones is to tab the amount to their monthly bills. It's like paying a tax on electricity to finance the Serbian television network. However, there is a difference. In the case of Serbian television, one public enterprise (the Serbian power industry) collects tax for another, while mobile phone owners will pay taxes to Bogoljub Karic, the majority owner of Mobtel's shares. Karic is now in a bit of a tight spot as a reputable private entrepreneur, as he is a member of the government that invented the tax. Karic's assignment is to persuade foreigners to invest a few bucks here, but his hands are now tied as all potential investors will wonder if they too will have to open temporary accounts to pay the newly-invented taxes.

However, why should I be upset if Bogoljub Karic isn't?