If luxury cars are possible signs of corruption, who are most suspect?
By Vernon B. Sarne — 20 Sep 2013

To supposedly help government increase its tax collection, the Bureau of Internal Revenue has been unleashing its attack dogs on luxury car dealers and their customers. The stories border on the absurd: from BIR agents demanding car dealers to furnish them with a list of clients, to these same taxmen conducting stakeouts at restaurants to check what the above-mentioned clients order for dinner. Even BIR commissioner Kim Henares herself has been spotted lingering around premium-car displays at high-end malls to get a feel for the kind of people these expensive automobiles attract.

Lifestyle check, they call it.

Henares and her team operate on this logic: If someone can afford a luxury car, he probably doesn't pay taxes and is thus a criminal. In the eyes of our honest government, the purchase of at least a P3-million vehicle must be a dead giveaway that the buyer has hidden and quite possibly ill-gotten riches--never mind if said buyer owns a legitimate business.

Fair enough. Maybe some of these businessmen are indeed shady. But how to explain senators and congressmen being able to afford not just one but a fleet of luxury cars? How come this isn't suspicious? Surely, BIR agents do not need to organize elaborate surveillance operations just to see if politicians are really in possession of multimillion-peso vehicles--the politicians flaunt these cars themselves for all the world to see, complete with offensive protocol plates and a convoy of power-tripping escorts.

According to the Department of Budget and Management, 23 senators will earn a total of P24,840,000 this year--or P1,080,000 per senator. (The senate president will earn slightly higher, at P1,236,000.) This means each senator is paid exactly P90,000 a month--before taxes, I presume. How in Ettore Bugatti's name can these so-called lawmakers afford BMW X6s and Lexus LXs and Mercedes-Benz S-Classes and Audi R8s and Porsche Panameras...while living in thickly walled mansions? How is this picture "normal" in the eyes of the self-appointed lifestyle-checkers?

Oh, yeah, there is a bulletproof alibi for all of this: The senators and the congressmen had already been obscenely affluent even before they entered politics, thanks to their commercial establishments and show-business careers. They merely ran for public office out of a consuming desire to serve the country. Yep, because it totally makes sense to leave a highly profitable undertaking and throw away hundreds of millions of pesos during the campaign period, for a job that pays P90,000 a month. Makes absolutely perfect sense.

I don't know which is more infuriating: That these sons of bitches so brazenly steal our money, or that they think we're so stupid we don't know what's happening.

It's all a charade. Government goes after "tax evaders" and coddles "tax thieves" at the same time. What they're trying to do, in essence, is this: Force us to pay more taxes so there is a bigger pie for the plunderers that walk among them to partake of. Who in his right mind would want to let go of his hard-earned money in this case? Which straight-thinking person would want to surrender the fruit of his labor just so the social-climbing daughters of well-connected swindlers can buy Hermès bags and Christian Louboutin shoes, and the overweening sons of venal government officials can terrorize the expressways with Ferraris and Lamborghinis?

To say Malacañang has no knowledge of all the thieving that has been taking place in the country's halls of power, is to say the conniving skills of our senators and congressmen are far more superior than those of the CIA. Noontime TV show hosts and movie action stars don't have half the IQ of a rookie agent in Langley, Virginia.

Enough with the farce. We know what's going on--now more than ever, thanks to PDAF-pocketing senators and congressmen. You want everyone to pay taxes, make sure the taxes go where they're supposed to--not to the tawdry mistresses of politicians who splurge on Thermage and whatever else beauty doctors dangle before them, in hopes they wouldn't be dropped in favor of the next pretty young thing that comes along.

Enough with the invasive lifestyle checks. You won't find the solution among luxury car buyers. You will find it in the executive, legislative and even judicial branches of government. The crooked among them are exactly why the national coffers are never sufficient--why the taxes collected can't seem to fund the projects that matter.

To reuse my own Facebook post: "Instead of conducting intrusive lifestyle checks on buyers of luxury cars, government should run after corrupt politicians. Because they're exactly the reason people don't want to pay taxes."
source If luxury cars are possible signs of corruption, who are most suspect? - All Will Drive