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As in AY NAKO!!
This is cut and fezzed from an inquirer blog:
By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine
WHEN I returned from a vacation abroad with my bag full of new books I had bought years ago, a customs person at the airport examined my bags and looked at me quizzically. What did I do abroad, she asked. I was on vacation, I answered. She scratched her head and then said irritably: If you were on vacation, why did you bring books with you?
This anecdote comes to mind with something that really bothers the book lover in me. Several people much smarter than me have commented on this issue recently, with my personal favorite being Manolo Quezon’s May 4 column in the Inquirer. He said it perfectly, so I’ll quote him:
“The policy of our government seems to be the exact opposite: to put the squeeze on citizens in order to add to government coffers depleted by electioneering expenses. Over at McSweeney’s is an entry by Robin Hemley, the director of the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program who’s in the Philippines on a Guggenheim Fellowship. In ‘The Great Book Blockade of 2009,” he details the creativity of Filipino bureaucrats like Customs Undersecretary Espele Sales.
According to Hemley, the situation developed this way. Stephenie Meyer’s novel ‘Twilight’ apparently did so well in the bookstores that the number of copies being imported attracted the attention of a Customs official. Examiner Rene Agulan decreed that duties be paid. It seems that the importer of the book reacted in a manner familiar to most book lovers in the country: to eliminate the hassle, the importer complied with the Customs levy on the title.
Hemley says surrendering to the authorities was a mistake because the Philippines, back in 1952, became a signatory to the Florence Agreement, aUnited
Nations treaty that mandates the tax-free importation of books in order to facilitate the free flow of “educational, scientific, and cultural materials.” The importer’s submission to the whims of Customs whetted the Bureau’s appetite; they put a squeeze on all book importations by air. The result? For two months virtually no imported books entered the country.Not least because it seems book sellers had the gumption to challenge the government. Enter Undersecretary Espele Sales whose PowerPoint presentation to booksellers Hemley describes as ‘Orwellian,’ because of an essay in which Orwell examined how officials twist words to suit their purposes.
Take the official’s interpretation of the following sentence in RA 8047 (the Book Publishing Industry Development Act): ‘the tax and duty-free importation of books or raw materials to be used in book publishing.’ According to Sales, this lacked a comma after the word ‘books,’ which meant that what was tax and duty-free was only books used for book publishing.
People in the book industry were left scratching their heads, wondering what a ‘book used in book publishing’ is. Customs went further and said it interpreted the Florence Agreement to mean only educational books are tax-free, with Customs deciding whether a title qualifies as being educational or not. Booksellers responded that this went against half a century’s common understanding of the treaty; did this mean everyone had been wrong and Customs suddenly right? Sales replied, ‘Yes.’”
Succinct and sad. There’s no other way to say this: It is disgraceful of the Bureau of Customs to apply this ridiculous reasoning to taxing books. Now, I’m vehemently against the taxing of any books regardless of the reason. I have a long list of complaints about the Post Office’s delight at taxing books. But this reason, and the way it’s been applied and justified, is embarrassing. It taints the entire government. Taking advantage because people want to read books? Reading is a bad thing? Just because you can’t properly collect customs and duties due to incompetence or bad policy doesn’t mean you should make it up by milking the honest people who do pay their taxes. And this woman who decided to reinterpret the Florence Agreement to suit the government’s purpose? She needs to read more. Or maybe that’s exactly the problem.
AY NAKO!!
This is cut and fezzed from a Fezbook message:
Grr! This news makes my blood boil! Picked this up on a blog and I'm spreading the news to help stop this outrage.
In the last few months, the importation of books into the Philippines has virtually stopped. (To those of you who frequent bookstores, I don't know if you've noticed.) The reason why is explained in this article by Robin Hemley, a University of Iowa creative writing professor currently on a fellowship in the Philippines.
If you have no time to read the article, the essence is that because the Bureau of Customs has decided to impose duties on the importation of books into the Philippines.
This, despite the 1950 Florence Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials (which you can see here), which the Philippines ratified in 1979. The preamble of the agreement states: "Considering that the free exchange of ideas and knowledge and, in general, the widest possible dissemination of the diverse forms of self-expression used by civilizations are vitally important both for intellectual progress and international understanding, and consequently for the maintenance of world peace...", an indisputable proposition.
here's an excerpt from Robin Hemley's article (i shortened it a bit. better if you can read the whole thing.) -
...Over coffee one afternoon, a book-industry professional (whom I can't identify) told me that for the past two months virtually no imported books had entered the country, in part because of the success of one book, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. The book, an international best seller, had apparently attracted the attention of customs officials. When an examiner named Rene Agulan opened a shipment of books, he demanded that duty be paid on it.
The importer of Twilight made a mistake and paid the duty requested. A mistake because such duty flies in the face of the Florence Agreement, a U.N. treaty that was signed by the Philippines in 1952, guaranteeing the free flow of "educational, scientific, and cultural materials" between countries and declaring that imported books should be duty-free. Mr. Agulan told the importer that because the books were not educational (i.e., textbooks) they were subject to duty. Perhaps they aren't educational, I might have argued, but aren't they "cultural"?
No matter. With this one success under their belt, customs curtailed all air shipments of books entering the country. Weeks went by as booksellers tried to get their books out of storage and started intense negotiations with various government officials.
What doubly frustrated booksellers and importers was that the explanations they received from various officials made no sense. It was clear that, for whatever reason—perhaps the 30-billion-peso ($625 million) shortfall in projected customs revenue—customs would go through the motions of having a reasonable argument while in fact having none at all.
Customs Undersecretary Espele Sales explained the government's position to a group of frustrated booksellers and importers in an Orwellian PowerPoint presentation, at which she reinterpreted the Florence Agreement as well as Philippine law RA 8047, providing for "the tax and duty-free importation of books or raw materials to be used in book publishing." For lack of a comma after the word "books," the undersecretary argued that only books "used in book publishing" (her underlining) were tax-exempt.
"What kind of book is that?" one publisher asked me afterward. "A book used in book publishing." And she laughed ruefully.
I thought about it. Maybe I should start writing a few. Harry the Cultural and Educational Potter and His Fondness for Baskerville Type.
Likewise, with the Florence Agreement, she argued that only educational books could be considered protected by the U.N. treaty. Customs would henceforth be the arbiter of what was and wasn't educational.
"For 50 years, everyone has misinterpreted the treaty and now you alone have interpreted it correctly?" she was asked.
"Yes," she told the stunned booksellers.
Throughout February and March, bookstores seemed on the verge of getting their books released—all their documents were in order, but the rules kept changing. Now they were told that all books would be taxed: 1 percent for educational books and 5 percent for noneducational books. A nightmare scenario for the distributors; they imagined each shipment being held for months as an examiner sorted through the books. Obviously, most would simply pay the higher tax to avoid the hassle.
Distributors told me they weren't "capitulating" but merely paying under protest. After all, customs was violating an international treaty that had been abided by for over 50 years. Meanwhile, booksellers had to pay enormous storage fees. Those couldn't be waived, they were told, because the storage facilities were privately owned (by customs officials, a bookstore owner suggested ruefully). One bookstore had to pay $4,000 on a $10,000 shipment.
The day after the first shipment of books was released, an internal memo circulated in customs congratulating themselves for finally levying a duty on books, though no mention was made of their pride in breaking an international treaty...
Please forward this or disseminate this in any way you can. In the name of reading.
photo courtesy of Joel Chua (I invoke "fair use"):
http://joelchua.com/blog/2
http://joelchua.com/blog/2
Lets post and repost! Sumbong natin kay Mon Tulfo! Expose na toh!
Madam Undersecretary! The PILOSOPO TASYO Award goes to you! Mabuhay!
Psssst Partner! Baka this is why a Certain Bookstore out there hasnt paid us yet for the KARROTS CASES! (shameless plug langhiiya)
