By
Tom Odhiambo
Title: Corrupt Histories; Editors: Emmanuel Kreike and William Chester Jordan; Publisher: University of Rochester Press – Studies in Comparative History; Date: December 2004; Pages: 498
It is a given today that every human being pays tax in one form or another. It may be immediate or deferred; direct or indirect; voluntary or involuntary etc.
Tax is part and parcel of human life because it is in many places the primary source of revenue for governing authorities, with which they provide public goods and services. Public roads, schools, hospitals, security, medicine etc. should be and are often paid for by taxes.
History shows, however, that it is not often easy to collect taxes. Not all citizens find it agreeable to pay taxes. Many deliberately avoid paying taxes or only pay partially.
Why would people who benefit from goods and services paid for by their taxes refuse to or only pay a part of what they owe the ‘public purse’?
There are many answers to this question. But one of the most cited is corruption. What do we mean by corruption? There are almost as many definitions of corruption as the number of individuals who try to define it.
Yet this amorphous word is still used to describe behavior that serves the interest of the individual when they handle public resources. A government officer who uses an official car for personal errands is deemed to be corrupt.
A public office holder who seeks a bribe or an inducement in order to render services for which she is officially paid is said to be corrupt. An individual who solicits extra payment – where expected payment is already made – so as to perform their duties is seen as corrupt.
The monies extorted from members of the public seeking public goods and services is an added tax, only that in this case the revenues don’t reach the common purse but go into the pockets of individuals.
Public service or state offices, even though they are established on behalf of the general populace and are paid for from a common purse tend to be some of the most corrupt places in many societies.
They are generally rated corrupt by several institutions that research and produce an index of the levels of corruption, locally or globally.
The police service, for instance, is always fingered in many countries in the world, as corrupt – by which it is generally suggested that police officers seek bribes or even extort payment above the officially stated fee for services sought by members of the public.
But is this a recent phenomenon? Scholars suggest that there is enough evidence to show that such practices have always existed in history.
In Corrupt Histories (edited by Emmanuel Kreike and William Chester Jordan) several authors write about the nature, causes, and consequences of corrupt practices throughout history.
The authors note that in some state jurisdictions, government agents would levy taxes, from which they were expected to deduct the cost of their services and remit the rest to the central state.
Such a system relied on the willingness and honesty of the said individual to not levy more than expected taxes (and so avoid restlessness by the citizens, and probable resistance), and also send to the government its due.
As would most likely be expected when an individual is given such powers, some would not follow the law; they would instead bend it to serve their interests.
In an essay, ‘Officials and Money in Late Imperial China: State Finances, Private Expectations, and the Problem of Corruption in a Challenging Environment’, Pierre-Etienne Will, shows how the individual appointed by the state to administer a region, and also collect taxes, may be overwhelmed by the conditions under which they work and exceed the specific functions of their office.
The story goes like this: the state sends a civil servant to administer a region. It expects him to perform all the functions that come with the ‘office’, including behaving in a manner that befits the office – being a man of dignity.
The author summarizes the problem this way:
“What makes the Chinese case particularly interesting to the study is that the very notion – usually thought of as a modern one – of a civil servant getting paid a salary that is supposed to make him self-supporting and independent, and hence able to operate and yet ‘not take one cent from the populace’ for whose sake he is expected to mobilize all his energies in a devoted and impartial way, was very much present in the Chinese discourse.”
The Chinese state would often not bother as its officials, spread in the countryside, far away from the ruling center, charged extra fees in order to raise enough money for their services and upkeep.
In many cases, the tax collector was the accounting authority, and the head office had little or no control over him. Many of these officers in the far corners of the country could not raise enough money from local levies to pay for the cost of the bureaucracy they were running.
Historically, civil service salaries have always tended to be poor compared to remuneration in the private sector.
Civil servants are generally paid lowly yet expected to maintain social status that reflects their high office – live well, dress well, have domestic servants, have means of transport, employ subordinate staff, progress socially etc – as well as the seriousness of the very office of the state that they represent.
How have civil servants dealt with the contradiction of low or poor pay and the need to project the dignity and seriousness of their office?
History shows, as the essay we cite above notes, that civil servants have been inclined towards levying extra duties on local businesses and populations – either with the express or implied permission of the appointing authority.
It is this extra taxation that makes some bureaucracies appealing. The taxation comes in many forms, all falling under the umbrella corruption. Indeed, the general public simply calls it corruption, be it a police officer extorting from a hapless citizen or even seeking a bribe politely.
It could be direct embezzlement of resources meant for some public project. A local administrator may levy a non-existent fee for some services or adjust the fee and keep the extra money.
In other words, although popular discourse uses the word corruption to refer to these practices, citizens need to begin to understand that this is just another tax, added onto the formal taxes that they pay.
When a passenger pays 10 extra shillings which is passed on to the traffic police officer, that citizens is being taxed, without his or her consent.
When an administrator insists on payment for services that should generally be free, they are introducing a new tax, which doesn’t enter the common pool of public revenue.
All the money collected goes to the administrator’s pocket and those of his seniors who may have encouraged him to levy the fee.
When corruption seems to be an integral part of public office, it is taxation by any other name. And the reason it cannot be wholly eliminated is because it has an osmotic effect – it flows upwards, despite the denials by higher officers.
The bribes or extorted monies collected by the low-level clerk, or the policeman on the beat, or the cess collector, among others, may end up in the individual’s pocket in the immediate. But in the long run it that money is shared upwards in one form or another.
Supposing that the same low-level civil servant faces such extra taxation beyond his workplace, then the cycle repeats itself, sometimes becoming so vicious as to undermine the progress of the society.
This is one of the main reasons why the ordinary citizens need to understand the history and workings of corruption in relation to the tax burden they carry. With knowledge on the debilitating effects of corruption, it is possible to think critically about reforms and remedies in relation to taxation.
The writer teaches at the University of Nairobi. Tom.odhiambo@uonbi.ac.ke. He can also be contacted at 0720009155
