A fine for a gift of homemade rakia? No government has ever achieved success with a narrow-minded administrative approach that chases fiscal results from pennies, without even having an idea how to collect them.
In the mid-1930s, a fine of 500 leva (over half an average monthly salary) was introduced in Bulgaria for lighting a cigarette from a cigarette. At the same time, the import and use of the recently familiar gasoline lighters were banned. Why? Matches are stamped, and lighting a cigarette from a cigarette or using a lighter reduces revenue in the treasury. By how much – unclear.
Nearly a century later, the finance ministry is proposing a fine of 1,000 euros (nearly half an average monthly salary) if you have homemade rakia from friends at home. Why? This is how the state wants to stop tax evasion. Currently, rakia from small cauldrons is taxed at half the excise tax (up to 30 liters per family) compared to that in stores. The motive is again fiscal and again immeasurable or negligibly small.
Gifted homemade rakia is illegal, but we will not fine you
The encroachment on the nation's rakia identity caused an explosion of thousands of memes on social networks and curses among family hearths and pubs. Finance Minister Galab Donev tried to put out the fire - the state would not peek on people's shelves, the goal was to prevent the trade in homemade rakia in establishments at the expense of the tax authorities. He is right, there is such a practice, but his decision is Solomonic: we prohibit you from giving homemade rakia as a gift, but we will not fine you, at least because we cannot rummage through your refrigerator and basement (not that we necessarily don't want to). Just like in elections: you are legally obliged to vote, but if you don't vote - there is no sanction (we probably want there to be one, but who knows who you will vote for).
By the way, the rakia affair happened on the eve of elections. And during elections, enough stones fall on your head from the cronies in your own government and from the opposition lurking for revenge, so that you step on the hoe yourself. And on a barren, stony field.
You step on the hoe when you don't know how and when to dig
Digging a field doesn't require much, you just need to know how and when to dig. If you are a novice, it is good for someone to teach you. But if suddenly the parliament and the state administration are filled with people without experience, governance becomes a matter of pure luck. And now the short stick of the lottery has come out: a cabinet official has probably been drawn, who has no idea of the life and mentality of Andreshko and Purko, who hoped that the state would finally chase after the big criminals instead of the little guy.
However, the ignorant from the very beginning do not want to learn. First, the government cut off the Covid supplement for pensioners and the head of the parliamentary budget committee said with a simple heart that "not all pensioners will starve without these 2 euros a month". In the end, the old pensioners were pitied, and the new retirees were deprived of 2.39 euros.
Recently, the Ministry of Finance began to impose a serious excise tax on electric cars with a power of over 340 horsepower, considering them luxurious because of the huge number of "horses", without suspecting that this is a standard power for many mass models. The state is both supposedly stimulating ecological transport with tax breaks, and right now – in the fuel crisis – decided to make it more expensive. As soon as they felt the public anger, the ministry backed down, once again demonstrating incompetence. The Deputy Minister announced that these cars would be exempt from excise tax because "in electric cars, the power is supplemented by the battery" – and did not ask themselves at all where the hidden "horses" that complement each other are.
A high political price for pennies
No government has achieved success with a narrow-minded administrative approach that chases fiscal results from pennies without even having an idea how to collect them. And when faced with the political price of these absurdities, the government backs down, but the blowback remains on its shoulder. You may have squandered millions on the taxpayer and escaped a high political price, but when you reach into his pocket for pennies, the indignation and humiliation are worth millions.
Government is not accounting fiscal and administrative voluntarism, but balanced decisions and preliminary, not consequential, communication with people. Otherwise, out of the blue, Andreshko may abandon you in the middle of the swamp.
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This text expresses the opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the State Gazette as a whole.