What is the street value of being human?

The current dispute between the book industry and the Department of Finance regarding the imposition of taxes on book importation boils down to this.

The book industry — publishers, booksellers, authors, distributors — represented by the Book Development Association of the Philippines says that, according to the law, book imports are not to be taxed. They cite Republic Act 8047 and the 1952 Florence Agreement to back up their position.

The Department of Finance says that according to the law, book imports are to be taxed. They cite R.A. 8047, which interestingly enough was authored by the current Finance Secretary, and the 1952 Florence Agreement to back up their position.

In short, it is all a matter of interpretation. The absence of a comma can alter the meaning of the text; a phrase like “the tax and duty-free importation of books or raw materials to be used in book publishing” can mean entirely different things to the people who produce books and the people who try to quantify the value of books.

There also seems to be some confusion over whether the words’ “publishing” and “printing” are interchangeable. “Publishing,” according to Webster’s Dictionary, is “the business or profession of the commercial production and issuance of literature, information, musical scores or sometimes recordings, or art.” Printing is “the act of making copies by impressing paper against an inked printing surface.” Publishing is the industry; printing is the technology invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1454, although historians declare that moveable type — the materials used to impress the words on paper — was invented in China by Pi Sheng in 1041.

Nations have routinely gone to war over the interpretation of religious texts. Ironically for the book industry, which is in the business of disseminating words, words are being employed against them. The word “Orwellian” has been brandished by the anti-taxation side; this should make old George very happy. Some of the arguments are reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s evasions during the Monica Lewinsky affair: “Depends on what you mean by ‘the’.”

For years the Philippines has enjoyed some of the lowest book prices anywhere. This is because book imports are not taxed. In the case of the big bookstores, the bookseller’s discount is passed on to the buyers. You can get the mass-market paperback (“pocketbook”) of, say, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo at P315, even if the cover price is US$7.99 (about P375). Even at Fully Booked, where the merchandise is more expensive, the trade paperback of James Salter’s Last Night, listed at US$12 (about P564) on the cover retails for P499.

I was under the impression that a Republic Act from the Marcos era was responsible for the duty-free status of books. It has not been mentioned in the materials I’ve read, but perhaps I haven’t been paying close enough attention. Legalese is more tedious reading than tech manuals written in a remote Asian sweatshop.

The relatively low prices of books here have unfortunately not led to widespread book-reading. The costs are still too high for the average Filipino wage earner who must prioritize food and shelter.

Occasionally a book like Twilight, the Harry Potter series, or the Dan Brown potboilers become big hits, and these keep the book industry going. (The number one bestselling author on earth, I read somewhere, is James Patterson. He is not to be confused with James Hamilton Paterson, who’s written wonderful books about the Philippines including Playing With Water, Seven-Tenths and America’s Boy.) Now that the Finance Department has declared that it’s all been a mistake, books should’ve been taxed all along, expect books to become more expensive and even further beyond the reach of the average citizen.

“Hindi naman nagbabasa ang mga yan” is the snobbish view; it may be true, but it doesn’t make it less sad.

We can also expect new books to take longer to arrive on store shelves. They will have to sit in warehouses while Customs officials decide how much educational/cultural value they possess, and level the corresponding taxes. In my understanding, the less textbook-ish a book is, the higher the tax. The task of quantifying the educational/cultural value of book imports is assigned to the Customs examiners. I hope they took lots of Comparative Literature classes; being the arbiters of culture is a heavy burden to bear.

What’s tragic is that in our country, decisions are always based on expediency. We need more money, so we tax books; we cannot afford culture; we cannot allow ourselves to think for the long term. Thus we are reduced to quantifying everything, including the unquantifiable.

Books are the repository of human experience. They tell us what being human is all about. How much is that in pesos?

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