Many years ago one bright, sunny morning, I was whistling away, high-fiving my workmates and laughing hard at the smallest of jokes. Then in walked this chap, raining on my parade of joy. Now, you can always tell when a messenger bears bad news. It’s ominous. His presence alone numbs all the good vibes in the air. He quietly sat at the reception and proceeded to hand over “the” letter. It was from Uganda Revenue Authority: a demand notice for a colossal sum in arrears going back to several years. The kind that required (for us to settle), that we sell all company assets, and still remain indebted. Reading that ultimatum, I was faced with two tough choices: Tell my jolly, faithful and hardworking workmates it was a good ride while it lasted (all these 5 years) and promptly head out to the village (that’s where all failed businessmen in Uganda go to) or else fight to keep our doors open. I elected for the latter. For the life of me, I will never forget what the URA officer (whose desk our file landed on) told me. “If you cannot run a business, please close it down and go to the village. You think the rest of us don’t want to own businesses?” I gave him a long bemused look, smiled, shook my head and walked on. I always know when it’s time to do that. Every good businessman does. I escalated my complaint to Richard Kamajugo, then Commissioner of Customs (now with Trademark East Africa). His understanding of International Trade is unrivaled. You see, the bone of contention had to do with insistence that we had not been remitting VAT on our international transport transactions. What our people did not care to know is that in as far as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is concerned, International Transport is zero rated. It is one of the supplies clearly listed in the third schedule of the VAT Act. GATT is a precursor to the World Trade Organization (WTO). After several months of red-tape ping-pong, It took one sober-minded official to have that demand retracted. In fact, not too long after that, another firm in my industry won a landmark suit against URA. Deepesh didn’t go to the village. Instead, it’s URA that came with bag-loads of cash (tax payers’ money) to his doorstep. I recalled this “little’ incident last night as I prayed for Uganda. It seems to me that everyday I have woken up in the last fortnight, there’s a proposal for a new tax. Now, it is no secret the economy is in dire straits, and we are between a rock and a very hard place as a country. But are there no sober-minded economists in the ministry of finance to see that this approach does not work? To beat a country out of a recession (and this sounds counter-intuitive), the immediate focus should be to provide tax relief. Yes, tax cuts so that, that money can go towards boosting demand. This one stimulus intervention coupled with limiting government borrowing to productive avenues (infrastructure, Agriculture, tourism, exports, enabling entrepreneurialism, etc) would take us far along the path to recovery. We surely do not need a sign. What is happening now is akin to pressing panic buttons when the house is already on fire! PS. That chap. The one who reviewed our file? He got laid off from his cushy job at URA. He started a business which collapsed a couple of years in. Why? The tax burden imposed on him was too heavy to bear. Where is he now? The village, I suppose. That’s where all the failed businessmen in Uganda go to. But he will bounce back if the lesson was not lost to him.