Philippines

I find it so frustrating that our parents pay income tax and what remains of the money after tax is taxed yet again by the VAT. Which by the way is among the highest in Southeast Asia, and disproportionately affects people with lower income (as their income has to be spent more on consumption). Instead of doing anything that would justify the taxes our politicians are negligent and even outright corrupt. Just look at the current scandals and open secrets nowadays! The DepEd scandal, the Flood Control scandal, and it's basically an open secret that BIR and Customs have shady shit going on...

And despite that, it is a common experience in public schools and universities that we have to "amot". Basically every one of us have to raise money to fund something because apparently the school """didn't have the budget""" for it. Whether the school itself is corrupt or it's because the school legitimately doesn't have funds, it still points to the fact that our taxes are not properly implemented at all. And the poorer the school is, the more likely they have to amot. Isn't this backwards? Instead of taxes being used as a distributive mechanism it's being centralised...