The Great Book Blockade of 2009

My column tomorrow will be on Robin Hemley’s latest Dispatch from Manila, as published in Timothy McSweeny’s Internet Tendency. It details the months-long embargo on book importations that resulted from the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s discovering it could reinterpret international treaties with impunity, until booksellers, faced with escalating storage costs, cried uncle and surrendered to the BIR by paying the fees it demanded.

This brings up my past entry, What the?? concerning the long-standing problem any booklover’s had with our government -which is, its trying to impose tariffs and duties even though the law grants exemptions to the public and others.

In contrast, blogger-turned member of parliament Jeff Ooi, in a recent entry on income taxes in Malaysia, pointed out the Malaysian government makes book and computer purchases tax-deductible.