Money Will Help Fund New Anti-corruption Ministry
MEXICO CITY - 5/19/08 Mexico has announced a shock plan to revitalize its weak economy by channeling billions of ‘bribery’ dollars back into the mainstream economy.
“Bribes, pay-offs and ransoms are Mexico’s three most important sources of income," said Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon during a press conference at Los Pinos, Mexico’s presidential residence. "Though each individual illegal payment may be small, together they form the grease that keeps our economic engine rolling. For too long such payments, usually forked over by panic-stricken tourists and trembling grandmothers, have remained in fiscal limbo. From now on the government will force bribe takers to declare these earnings and pay income tax - just like the other two percent of Mexicans who actually file returns.”
The details of Mexico’s proposed bribe tax have yet to be worked out. But Calderon outlined several broad points in today’s address. They include:
* A 10 percent tax on all bribes slipped to traffic cops who pull over motorists for no reason and then threaten them with fines, jail time, burial up to their necks in the desert or rape.
* A 15 percent tax on ransoms received by kidnapping gangs. This tax contains a loophole that would allow more sophisticated gangs with high overhead costs to deduct certain operational expenses, such as pay-outs for weapons purchases and costly long-term surveillance of potential victims.
* A 3 percent tax on the income of librarians, public health workers, toll booth operators, parking lot attendants, priests, teachers, firemen, judges, plumbers, chimney sweeps, dog-walkers, baby sitters, taxi drivers and dozens of others who by custom won’t lift a finger to perform their duties until a sufficiently thick wad of illicit pesos finds its way into their pockets.
A policeman checks a man's armpits for money. Calderon’s plan drew immediate criticism from police unions, low level government functionaries and kidnappers. Mexico City Police Federation chief Alfonso Chayutl Xtitloc said at a public demonstration today that bribes amount to 11 times a cop’s average monthly salary of 300 US dollars.
“This is classic state interventionism,” he told a crowd of 3 thousand uniformed officers who fired their weapons in the air and appeared visibly drunk. “To tax the money we earn by scaring the shit out of locals and tourists by insinuating that we can make their lives hell is to single out an honest hard-working sector for punishment.”
Veteran kidnapper Juan 'Cactus Thighs' Espinoza said the draft of the law was confusing. "It remains unclear who would pay this tax under certain circumstances," he said by phone from his seaside fortress in Ensenada. "For example, I kidnap a cop. His fellow officers then extort an entire village, under threat of extinction, to pay my ransom demand. Can the police then deduct the ransom from their income tax? And if they wipe out the village anyway, is that deductable?"
'Joselito' Mendoza has been kidnapped 73 times. He counts them out on his fingers for a reporter.To make that paperwork easier for the estimated millions of people affected by the new tax, the government will establish a free ‘bribe tax’ telephone help line. Calls will be recorded for quality control purposes.
President Calderon said in his address that bribe taxes could raise up to 7 billion dollars a year for the federal government. That money would fund the proposed Ministry Against Corruption and its team of hundreds of investigators whose job would be to root out the graft that has hobbled Mexico’s economy.
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