Fables from the Tax Torture Chambers
You could compare my experience with our local bureaucracy to a hot date that begins a little bit of LSD and ends with lots of STD. In order to apply for public project funding, you need to squeeze your way through the colossus of paperwork that makes that Borgesian infite library look like a cosy reading nook. I reached my breaking point at one of the offices where you get a certificate that doesn’t come with a gift but confirms your little venture is enlisted in their database. What a joy. In order to get to that point, you need to go to the federal tax service with a special form to fill, an additional document from the Ministry of Justice and bring your seal because you ain’t getting any here if you can’t sign and seal your papers.
Ah yes, and please remember to bring the contract with your accountant who forgot to give it to you in the first place. So you go to the agency to deal with this but it’s not that easy because there’s a problem with your tax report. Now I’m on the brink of heart attack because the last thing I need right now is a tax fraud lawsuit. Fortunately, I live in a banana republic where you can get what you want if the clerk at the taxation office decides not to ruin your day where you’re melting in eye-popping heat outside. Once that’s done, you sign the wrong paper so the clerk has to give you a brand new copy and it’s fucking exhausting. Whoever invented the AC deserves the Nobel Prize. You want to stay and wait for a brain freeze under the vent, but you don’t have a moment to waste and I hate my life right now.
Once that’s done and over with, you go back to the aforementioned tax service. You’re feeling the endorphine kick the shipwrecked must be feeling when land is withing reach. My own troubles here were far from over. When I triumphantly reached the reception desk of the tax service, they sent me back because you’re supposed to wear pants instead of bermudas. Though I didn’t exactly look like I was heading to the beach. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Back at home, I found a pair of jeans and sneakers, packed up my papers and laptop in a backpack that makes you feel like a mule. I was finally admitted upstairs to the lady sitting at her desk surrounded by a canyon of folders filled with forms exactly the same like mine. She’s as stoic as the Sphinx in Giza. Unlike her Egyptian twin however, this one bestows you with encouragement and compassion.
In Joel Schumacher’s 1993 film “Falling Down”, Michael Douglas plays a man who’s having the worst day of his life when he gets stuck in traffic due to construction work on the road, which turns into a trap he can’t find an easy way out of. It triggers several episodes of violence equally hilarious and cruel, where he’s fed up with a society that seems united in the mission of preventing him from seeing his daughter on her birthday. A special occassion turns into a nightmare where he destroys everything in his way, a metamorphosis worthy of Kafkian poetics. From a guy with suit and a briefcase, he morphs into a gunman with a bazooka going rogue. I’ll never forget the scene where he insists on a burger he can’t get in a fast food joint because they don’t serve it past breakfast time. You almost feel sorry for the cashier who just wants to finish his shift and go home like the rest of us.
Victims are reduced to a collateral in Joel Schumacher’s tale of everyman and his daily struggle against pointless rules and obstacles. Admittedly, I did feel the same gag reflex like his main character: in order to get an update for four pieces of paper, you need at least 10 and lots of cash for stamps and seals. What is this, a fucking game? As a kid I used to collect them. Now that I no longer send letters, they’re lying retired in an odd box at home somewhere. Anyway, it reached the point where I no longer knew which document was a copy and which the original. Fortunately, the gentle sphinx at the federal tax service encouraged me to take it easy and she can commiserate because she hates the job and loves to paint but life happens so she ended up here, working deep in the bowels of the Matrix.
We got into a conversation as she guided me through the tiresome process of mastering the futile craft of bureaucracy. She’s delighted I’m a writer and her son would definitely be interested in my work because he’s an avid reader who filled their house with more books she can handle. What kind of poetry do I write? Gosh, how do you answer a question that has nothing to do with this shit? Her name is Fatima and she graduated in economics. There’s space for creativity in it, she said. Maybe she still dabbles in painting, who knows. We shouldn’t give up on our original aspirations even if they’re reduced to hobbies. There will be compromises unrelated to this: family life, jobs, health. Whatever it is, keep it somewhere in your mind to remember who you were before you became who you are. The only thing missing here was “live,laugh,love” on the wall. She mentioned a book her son gifted her. It used to belong to her in the past without him knowing it. Her benevolent smile almost made me forget what a rush I was in.
As soon as I left, I switched my sneakers for sandals as my toes were hyperventilating underneath the leather. Relieved, I was back at the office of the lady that send me here. She looked at me with even less enthusiasm than the fast food manager in Falling Down. Yes, that’s it, but where’s the document this change from the tax service is based on? Ok, I’m imploding in slow-motion on the inside. Ah that’s what I meant, yes, here you go, please sign and seal it, you have your own official seal, don’t you? Ok, wait for 15 minutes and come back, we’ll have it all ready for you. The hands on my wrist watch moved as slow as turtles. I went around the corner to my neighbor’s bookshop, copied a document that also needed a seal. That’s the preferred diet of the Matrix: corruption. You pay for each and every fucking seal. Signed, sealed, screwed. Oh shut up, you’re almost there.
Back at the statistics office, the lady is finally done with my papers. Now time to pack up again and get an another seal of approval for a paper that says my taxes are just fine the way they are. Fortunately, the City Council isn’t very far away, just around the block. I dash past the panel informing me that my dresscode must be appropriate. Oh do give me a break. The door is in the shade, I once again go through all the papers in the bag, it’s there and I don’t need to go back home again. Just as I’m about to step through the door, I see a sign saying they’re closed. It’s as if a pile of rocks fell down on me. Falling down, yes, that’s what it felt like. The Matrix has won. And the deadline was four days ago. Shit. I want to sit down and sob into my palms but they’re dirty from all the cash I digged out to pay for seals that would make Michael Douglas nuke the whole damn place.
I give up. The paperwork needed updating anyway, so it had to be done sooner or later. By the time I finish this, whatever I needed it for will loose the allure. Too much fuss for a too small sum of money. The experience suggested going by the rulebook is a waste of time. This drives people to cheat every chance they get. Fatima and her peers were raised to believe sitting in that office is as good as it gets. Buried in paperwork that should be exclusively digital by now. But isn’t because we need pointless jobs to put food on our table. But there’s more to her. At the bookshop I was told these people get bonuses on their annual income. For what exactly? The question made me hit the keyboard to vent it all out of my system, so here we are. It’s all a part of the game. No one escapes the Matrix.
