The chair­man of the Board of In­land Rev­enue says, "In this new sys­tem if you owe five cents then (sic) we know." This is rem­i­nis­cent of the old adage, "pen­ny wise and pound fool­ish." While the board is fo­cus­ing on the five cents the mil­lions, and bil­lions, are get­ting away.

How many five cents does the chair­man think equates to $4.7 bil­lion? If she thinks that it is the peo­ple who owe five cents, or even $5,000, who are re­spon­si­ble for the bil­lions in out­stand­ing tax­es she is fool­ing no one but her­self. Not to men­tion the in­ter­est and penal­ties which, ac­cord­ing to her, amounts to $8.3 bil­lion.

You can he sure that such amounts did not ac­crue since last year. It would be in­ter­est­ing to find out for what years these vast amounts of tax­es are owed. It would be just as in­ter­est­ing to find out the suc­cess ra­tio of the last two tax amnesties.

The chair­man sounds just like the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, promis­ing to deal with se­ri­ous crime and fo­cus­ing on cit­i­zens not wear­ing seat belts and the like, while crim­i­nals get away with mur­der, rob­bery, rape and ag­gra­vat­ed as­sault, among oth­er things.

Mean­while, our amaz­ing chair­man of In­land Rev­enue, who boasts of the ef­fi­cien­cy of her de­part­ment, plans to col­lect $4.7 bil­lion in tax­es five cents at a time. The coun­try has had its fill of these big talk­ers who promise much and de­liv­er lit­tle.

Karan Ma­habirs­ingh

Chase Vil­lage