When I travel, I normally come home with a bagful of books. These are the only luxuries I allow myself; the only reward I take for hard work.
Over time, I have accumulated a small library. Books overwhelm my other worldly possessions. They spill over my tables; compete for space on my bedside. When I have guests, I clear seats of literature to accommodate them. I keep a powerful vacuum cleaner to keep my book pile from turning into a dust pile.
My friends, amazed at the clutter, ask if I have read all of the books I collect. To that query, I quote Umberto Eco’s snarling reply: They are not all meant to be read; only to be kept there for research and to be reminded about how much there still is to know.
Eco, that writer of such thick prose, is an even more obsessive book collector than I am. He amassed tens of thousands of books around himself, most of them barely browsed.
I paid good money for my books: so, habitually, I steal hours from my sleep to read them. I do so with a bit of maniacal frenzy, jumping from one to the next, digesting a chapter here and another there.
These days, it seems, I will have to figure out a way to smuggle in my books since I habitually bring home enough of the stuff to be feasibly considered in “commercial quantity” by the gatekeepers of commerce. I am considering putting them in a box and labeling the thing “food” — as in food for thought.
Some Philistine at the Bureau of Customs recently decided that, notwithstanding our commitments to the Florence Convention on the duty-free movement of literature, printed material should now be taxed. That intellectually hazardous opinion has been upheld by the Department of Finance, an event that probably signals a new dark age for the country.
That bizarre inclination to tax books in defiance of our treaty commitments and our society’s best interest is, no doubt, influenced by the frantic effort to beef up public revenues. The effort is frantic because of the failure of our revenue agencies to meet their targets of late. That failure now confronts us with a yawning public sector deficit that will likely force us into a new round of borrowing.
There are many reasons why our revenue agencies are failing to meet their goals, even as we discount the adverse effects of the current global financial crisis. I will not go into these many reasons here. But surely, taxing books will do very little to cure institutional failings.
To begin with, we already have a very low per capita consumption of printed material. Taxing books will only aggravate the crisis of idiocy that threatens our community. The decision to tax books is itself a symptom of that malaise.
Make no mistake: I have always been a strong supporter of broader public revenues. I supported VAT when it was most unpopular. I suggested imposing a special levy on fossil fuels when prices inordinately dropped a few months ago. I will support a steep increase in sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco even if doing so will burn a hole in my pocket.
But I cannot support taxing books or, for that matter, related media such as CDs, DVDs, I-pods, digital libraries and laptops. I cannot accept that proviso in the DOF ruling on the matter that unjustly empowers a minor bureaucrat at the Customs gate to decide on his feet whether the material bring brought in is “educational” or not.
My objections go beyond trite definitions of what is “educational” and what is not. It touches on a fundamental principle of what the state ought to be in society.
The state exists not only to provide order and protection to citizens. It does not exist solely to keep people employed and healthy. Beyond all those, the state ought to be a factor uplifting civilization. It must facilitate the community’s edification, not impede it.
It is the state’s responsibility to support culture and the arts. This is the reason governments support museums and subsidize orchestras. It is the reason governments are expected to support research and fund universities.
A few years ago, we will recall, one had to register with the Customs Bureau a laptop that was being brought out of the country and returned. That was to avoid being taxed for the device upon return.
Since I frequently traveled for meetings, the laptop was an unavoidable companion on planes. The required registration was unbearable annoyance. I harassed every policy-maker I could get my hands on win relaxation of regulations on the matter. I argued that computers (which used to be classified by our Customs Bureau as “toys”) are important tolls for literacy and productivity.
Regulations on bearing laptops across borders were eventually, albeit reluctantly, relaxed. Today, one is never asked at the airport about where the laptop was procured. My understanding is that computers are now free from duties, as they should be. That is the only way we could broaden public access to the global mainstream of information and culture.
The idea that some bureaucratic minion might be empowered to make a judgment at the gate on whether a printed material is educational or not is truly outrageous. Every publication is an instrument of literacy, even if they might offend the morals of some or be consigned as trash by others.
Where we stand today, literacy is already an imperiled skill. The Philistines who want to tax books aggravate the danger facing our civility.
I will never line up in that red lane reserved for people with goods to declare before Customs officers to present the books I purchased abroad. If they persist on inspecting the literature I bring to make a judgment on their “educational” value, I will sue for invasion of privacy.