Eye-Balling Taxes

Doing cement work for the furnace project with our guard.

The word on the street is that “the people” are starting to get upset with the current government (and I'm not talking about the US). In a desperate bid to raise more money since they appear to be out of it, the government has suddenly raised taxes on imported goods. Actually, I wonder if they might have just put a new emphasis on enforcing the existing rules, but I’m not sure. The examples that we’ve been given however are that in the last week many people have had their motorcycles or cars impounded by police on the road unless they pay a high tax on the spot or prove they have paid the import taxes on the vehicle. Also, the tax on goods coming in on trucks used to be done with the “eye-ball” method. You have this size truck, well then you pay about this much tax for whatever might be buried in the piles of stuff in it. But this past week, everything is starting to be unloaded from each truck, itemized, and then tax paid per item. An example of the result is that you could buy a bag of cement here for $8 two weeks ago. But now a bag that can be bought in the neighboring country for $4 has a tax of $5 placed on it. So after the transport costs, it has cost at least $10 to import before any effort to make a profit is added. This seems like a good recipe for killing an economy that is already one of the lowest in the world. At some point it will probably start affecting us, but right now we’re just watching as it affects some of the Christians we know who’ve been planning to build houses or stores in the next few months. People here can only end a story like this by saying- may God bring us relief!

--El Padre