Our Burden of the Time Tax
Each time we are delayed because of potholes or bridge closures without a backup plan, we pay a time tax.
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Only 1.6-2.0% of Indians pay income tax. These taxpayers also pay indirect tax in the form of GST for services and goods…GST is imposed on every Indian, whether below the poverty line or rich, infant or adult, with taxes ranging from 5% for glasses and trousers to 20% for hair-dye and 28% for skincare. Those who pay income tax are taxed twice, while the others are taxed once.
However, on top of these taxes, we also pay another tax due to the government’s inability to use our tax money appropriately and efficiently...a “time tax”.
The Sion ROB was closed two days ago, and the newspapers carried horror stories of people having to travel 45 minutes to get to their schools and offices, instead of the usual 5-10 minutes. This was not a natural disaster or a flood or a collapsing Bihar bridge. This was a planned closure two years in the making, with the demolition postponed at least three times in the last year for various reasons.
Once, while driving through the Canadian Rockies, I noticed that road signs would start 3-4 km in advance wherever there was roadwork and a possible change in the driving pattern, warning us well in time of potential slow-downs and suggesting alternate routes to ensure we wouldn’t get stuck or waste time. Notifying commuters in advance is standard practice in most of the rich, minority world, while we in the poor, majority world are consistently short-changed by the lack of foresight and planning by those in charge.
The MCGM had two years to plan for alternatives. It could have put up signboards starting at King’s Circle to inform people about the closure and alternate routes. It is not rocket science…it just needed a few people to sit down and do some advance planning and implement those plans. Instead, we had the usual chaos, the authorities choosing to let nature take its own course, as with the initial chaos after the Delisle road bridge closure in 2018, hoping people would figure out alternatives on their own.
We bear the brunt, wasting a significant amount of time because of the inefficient authorities in charge…this is the “time tax” we pay over and above all the other taxes.
When you spend 40 extra minutes to go from Sion (E) to Dharavi due to the authorities’ inefficiency, or an extra hour in your daily commute because of potholes, or 6 additional hours to drive to Nashik from Mumbai… that is your time tax.
It is not just the Govt that burdens us with a time tax.
Take KYC for example, which was established to prevent criminal abuse of the financial system. All it does is make non-criminals and law-abiding people like us waste time with paperwork. A trust I run couldn’t get KYC renewal from Axis Bank for 6 months and our account was frozen in the interim. The staff visited the local branch a dozen times and I made multiple calls, taking at least 20 man hours to sort it out. Will Axis, RBI, or the Govt reimburse me for the wasted time? The CP Tank branch of the Bank of India froze accounts for 15 days asking for KYC without notice…will BOI or the RBI bear the time tax it imposed on us?
I first read about the “time tax” in an article by Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic. Her article focused on the time wasted navigating the US financial, aid and tax systems. We have similar issues, but we also waste time on the roads due to mismanagement of road and repair funds. In short, we pay a time tax due to the inefficient use of our tax money by those in power.
Shouldn’t we pass the time tax we bear onto the Govt or the authorities concerned? If you spend an hour extra because the MCGM is unable to get the right vendor for good reliable roads, shouldn’t the MCGM reimburse you with a cash-back or liaise with the income-tax department to give an IT refund? If banks waste our time with KYC, shouldn’t they or the RBI or the Govt, or whoever is responsible, give a cash-back into our accounts? When customer service agents waste our time and put us on hold, shouldn’t those companies pay a financial penalty for the time we waste waiting?
Perhaps we can start by computing our time tax monthly or yearly, like IT or GST returns, to understand the time wasted due to the taxes we pay being mishandled by those we entrust to deploy them responsibly…if nothing else!
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