Tagged as: Iran taxis
“You know what our problem is,” our taxi driver tells my friend Mohammad who is sitting up front, “we don’t pay taxes.”
“Oh c’mon, Iranians already whine because they have to pay 10,000 tumans a year for house taxes.” (About 10 euros.)
“It doesn’t matter. We should pay more.”
“Why should that change anything? The regime does not answer to us. They still won’t answer to us with taxes either.”
“No, the driver is right,” I jump in. “As long as Iranians don’t pay taxes the government will not answer to them.”
“There is no country in the world with no taxes AND a government that answers to them. You have to have taxes,” the driver says. “Look at Europe. They pay a lot of taxes. They have good roads, good hospitals, governments that answer to them.”
“They pay too much.”
“Maybe, but they get a lot.”
“As long as you don’t pay taxes, the government says what are you complaining about? We pay *you*, you don’t pay us,” I add.
“She’s right. We need to take it step-by-step. Things won’t change overnight, but things will never change without taxes.”
Never heard anyone argue in favor of taxes before… Hmmm… Instead of soldiers and bombs, maybe America should send over a team of accountants and CPAs.
3 comments:
"Instead of soldiers and bombs, maybe America should send over a team of accountants and CPAs."
They always follow the soliders and bombs, thats the reason for bombing a nation into the stone age, to rebuild it, in your own image ;(
But alas it never*works, and this lesson is now being learned at a great cost, yet it will not be greater than the peace which comes from these events.
BL*M
The Last*War
My name is Frank and I live in Houston, Texas USA. I just ran across your blog and I think it's great! You know that there is not any real difference between any of us, only the people at the top are the real nutty ones....Good Luck
PS, Don't worry about us.
I agree. This is basically another way of saying, the main contributor to Iran's status quo (and the similar situation in most oil rich countries of the south) is the oil income, and government's absolute control over it. Without that, the government would have to rely on taxes and things would start falling in their right places.
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