Falling Back, 16. I Always Feel Like Someone is Watching Me.

These days, being a tax cheat is in the news a lot. In general, in the United States, it's not seen as a good thing. Oh, many people might fudge a figure or two, but anything beyond that, and it's just not the done thing. It angers people. Someone with a lot of money that hides things so they pay less than someone working two jobs just to make ends meet, brings out the Dr. Hyde in a lot of people.

In Spain, it also brings out the monster, but, instead of denouncing the rich tax cheat, it incentivizes regular people to cheat, themselves. If Amancio Ortega can get away with paying very few, taxes, then I'll find a way to do so, too, whatever the law says. 

Now that declared incomes are well known to the tax office, the only way to do so is to acquire irregular income. Many people do that by working odd hours on the weekends, clandestinely. They neither declare that income, nor does the person who hires them pay value added tax. No, there's no way to claim damages if the thing goes wrong, but that's a risk many are willing to take. 

Take buildings, for example. To build any kind of addition, outhouse, shed, pool, or pig sty, you need a permit from the local township, which will cost a few hundred euros. On that permit, everything must be spelled out: what will be done, who will do it, and the budget. The cost of the permit depends on that information. For many years, home owners did reforms without asking for a permit, if the reform could be hidden from view. A shed or a pool behind a tall fence. An addition to a house hidden beneath a barn roof. There were many ways to fool the tax man. 

But townships got wise to them, and turned to new technologies. Drones were bought, and flown around, note was taken of the crystal blue water in the pool, the new edifices that weren't marked down on the property list, and everything was checked and double checked. After some time, fines started to rain down on many property owners who had tried to defy the all-seeing eye of bureaucracy. 

This morning, I took my mother-in-law to

the cadastre office of our township to check out something. On the wall were two comic strips of a Galician cartoonist, both related to the picaresque. One had a man holding two pigeons, and a man holding a drone. The man with the pigeons was saying, ""Here you are... Two pigeons with two shots!" The man with the drone was replying, "That's nothing!! Here you are... The drone from the cadastre with one sweep of the broom!!" Let's say that the sight of a drone in the air above a village is not a welcome sight. Anyone who buys one to fly for fun, had better beware of hunting rifles and slingshots. 

The other comic strip was more of a dig at the Church. Behind a door someone knocks and says, "Good morning!! We've come to collect the real estate tax!" The couple sitting on the sofa start singing a hymn, "Together like brothers, members of one church!!" Of course, churches don't pay real estate tax. That's something that sits like a stone with many people. The Church, owner of prime real estate, doesn't pay taxes on any of it, not just the churches. It's another reason for the little guy to find a way to not pay his own share, since those who certainly can, don't. 

Not much has changed in Spain in the past centuries. The rich and powerful have plenty of loopholes to avoid paying their share. The Church, which declares that it looks out for all its brethren, doesn't do it by paying taxes in accordance with the wealth it owns, which it doesn't seem to use much to help its brethren, either. (The Church owns prime real estate in Madrid in the form of apartment houses, some of which it recently sold to hedge funds. These promptly evicted the tenants, many of whom had lived in those apartments all their lives, paying small rents.) So, in this country, cheating on taxes is almost a badge of honor. Until everyone pays their fair share, it's going to continue that way.

Life continues.