We have been regaled with ideas, proposals, promises and whatnot over the last few weeks and we still await the Labour Party’s election programme. Discussion is rife and the exchange of opinions is heard everywhere around us. It was my intention to write about the health sector today, but two matters recently brought to my attention have let loose an irresistible urge to change the course of this article.

Whatever happens after 9 March, I believe one thing will not change – and this is civil service bureaucracy. There will never be a party in government strong enough to be able to tackle the manner in which government departments serve us citizens as their clients. This situation never changes, as I had opportunity to highlight some months ago.

The first matter that has spurred me to write this week’s article on bureaucracy is the bureaucratic manner in which the Inland Revenue Department carries out its responsibilities and obligations. The nonchalant manner in which parts of the department perform their functions leave many baffled and embattled.

Recently the Department started work on the self-assessment tax returns that were filed last June. The timing is not too bad: seven months after submission is a great improvement over the time it used to take them to do the same job. I remember addressing a tax assessment a few years ago related to the early 1980s! Credit is surely due there.

However, tax assessments remain riddled with blatant errors stemming from irresponsible inputting when the obligatory provisional tax return is submitted and those who calculate the figures, knowingly or deliberately ignore.  The result is a tax assessment that requires a formal objection in order to set the record straight, an objection that will take months – hopefully not years – to be resolved.

Why should a taxpayer, who is paying the salaries of civil service employees, have to resort to all these lengthy and cumbersome procedures to sort out the obvious? How can an Inland Revenue Department employee insert a provisional tax payment and issue a receipt in early January and write down that it refers to the provisional tax for December after that year? Since when does anyone pay provisional tax 12 months in advance? Is it possible that these bright employees do not realise that they are doing something wrong? Of course they do, they just do not care! The “let the taxpayer resolve it” attitude prevails: let the taxpayer file an objection, let him spend his hard-earned money on his accountant to ensure the proper completion and submission of the required forms, otherwise the objection will be null. Why all this? Well, because civil service employees are untouchable bureaucrats.

The government of the day after 9 March, be it Nationalist or Labour, will be held at ransom politically if and when it comes to discipline.

The second observation I wish to make – and which occurred to me while zapping from one television station to the other this week – was a request from the GRTU to the Prime Minister to further amend rent laws. The request would set the clock back to the time of previous political mistakes and protectionism by obliging tenants of commercial outlets who have unlawfully held properties since 1979 at miserly annual rents to return them to their lawful owners by 2018, or else to continue occupying such properties but at actual commercial rates.

The GRTU is claiming that many businesses will have to close if no amendment is forthcoming. With respect, what the Prime Minister should have been reminded of is the fact that the Rent Law Amendment Act gave a further 10 year protection period to these same businesses, allegedly to allow them time to rectify their position. Today, after they have done nothing but continue to enjoy and benefit from this illegal state of affairs, they are putting political pressure on the government and surely also on the Opposition, to bend to their requests. Let’s be serious! Do they really expect the Prime Minister – or the Leader of the Opposition, for that matter – to fall for this sham? Reopening the rent law amendments is a non-starter from all angles, not only political, and no amount of pressure will bear such desired fruit.

For the record – and to avoid any suspicion or allegation of a conflict of interest – I do not own any property subject to the 1979 rent laws and neither do any of my family.