Editor,

RE: "Traders decry high penalties on electronic billing defaulters” (The New Times, January 15).

Instead of whining about high fines for not complying with the law, why not comply?

A business operator who does not comply with the law requiring the use of electronic billing machines in order to enable Rwanda Revenue Authority to monitor that business’s compliance with the rules on payment of value-added tax isn’t engaged in a victimless crime; we the people of Rwanda are that business’s collective victims.

The taxes foregone represent a shortfall in public revenue that either has to be paid by others through higher levies on those businesses and individuals which are compliant, or they are represented by public services that remain undelivered or higher public interest charges because government must borrow higher amounts to deliver the essential services the public must have.

And so, let businesses comply with the law rather than fail to do so and then whine about being hit with the inevitable costs of non-compliance.

The public, too, should be sensitised to develop a culture of demanding tax-compliant receipts for all purchases.

Those who think they get lower prices by avoiding value-added tax don’t understand that, in the long-run, we are all poorer when we so selfishly pursue private gain at the expense of our collective interest.

We privatise the gains while unfairly socialising the costs (i.e. the cost of benefits accruing to individuals is shifted to the rest of society). This is wrong and is rightly not tolerated by society, which shows its displeasure through punitive fines against the culprits.

Mwene Kalinda