West of the Town

Sunday 26 March 2017

Please to pay taxes

Some of you will know that the residents of a poor town in the Philippines were given eviction notices recently. The terms were 15 days notice and to remove "any improvements they had made on the land". This included the church build there (picture).

Now for most people, not the church, this meant being homeless; men, women, children and babies, young and old. With nowhere to go, it was devastating. As a result, the people were in fighting mood, with one octogenarian vowing to die rather than leave; and she meant it.

The town leader got involved and the history soon started to become clear. There had been 2 hearings where the land had been claimed by an "out of towner". Both failed. But then a third hearing, that no one knew about, had succeeded. The local counsellor was approached and an investigation begun.

Well some weeks later, just a few days ago from this writing, we heard the result. An official from the capital Manila came down. The claim would be contested and it would the the government that contests it. The judge who ordered the evictions was removed from office. The claimant, in view of this has dropped the claim. 

It was good to see the government standing up so strongly for those who were so poor. It is one of the good, but untold stories of the current president, so strongly maligned for being controversial, who has vowed to remove corruption from the country. The country's recent history has rulers who have shown no such concern.

And now the people will be issued with deeds to the properties they "own". It's like buying it free. And there will be, of course, with the official ownership, the appropriate property tax.

I think this time we may find people who are pleased to pay the tax!

by
Terry


Thursday 2 March 2017

Bank Logic

The bank called me the other day. They were not complaining but it appears I had made life a little difficult for them.

I use the bank to make transfers and there is a small charge for this. Up to X Euro it is €4 and from X+1 Euro it is €6. Because I could not remember what the rates were, last month I had sent X+5 Euro to cover the transfer costs.

Now let's see it from the bank's angle.
  1. I sent X+5 Euro. 
  2. If they charge me €4 then they send on X+1 Euro.
  3. But X+1 Euro is a €6 charge.
  4. So if they charge me €6 they send on X-1 Euro.
  5. But X-1 Euro is a €4 charge.
  6. See 2.

It appears I gave their computer a headache.

The bank solved the problem in a very acceptable way. They manually intervened and clicked the "free transfer" option. It appeared odd at the time because I had noticed they did not charge me and I didn't know why. Now I do, but somehow I don't think it will work twice.

Next time I will send them X+4; although I don't think it is all my fault. I just wanted to be sure to cover the costs. So now I have made a note in several places of the charges.

The other part of the problem is their charging strategy; and some convoluted logic....