Mirror
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Marital
bliss taxed? My main concern as always is about my darling friends who seem quite impatient to settle down. Obviously, if you are not really loaded, you can say bye-bye to that beautiful fairy tale wedding you always wanted – the government seems to want us to procreate merrily (we hear that contraceptives are going to be considered luxury items? And remember the maternity leave of one whole year????), but seems totally not bothered about the “tying the knot” part of it. Since tradition dictates that we invite half the country (everyone seems to be related to everyone else) for the wedding ceremonies, (and those are to be taxed heavily including the halls which were exempt before) the only option seems to be to elope…(how romantic). At least the money could be used for your honeymoon or better yet, could even support your first few months’ food bills. Fellow sisters, all ye who love gold and gems – unfortunately it seems that you would have to join the ranks of those like me, who love “coloured plastic”(as John likes to call my very expensive costume jewellery, which being a man he would obviously not know ANYTHING about!). Of course, among those weird females who were found gleefully jumping up and down at the idea of their mum’s wish of decking them in lots of gold good-bye, guess who was cheering them on??? Yours truly, who really can’t stick gold unless it’s something very dainty. As always, though mums were proved right, since all those who have HUGE pieces of gold can rest assured that your net worth just went up a zillion percent!! Food – which reminds me, we could really beat America as the land of the obese – what with all this encouragement to eat potatoes and rice to name just a few of the fatty stuff that got tax concessions, simply forget about going on diets! It’s even gotten more expensive to be selective with what you poke in your mouth… So once the kids start coming in, and the population double explodes, will they be taxing you for each kid you have? Like in China where the extra kid is virtually labelled a burden in not so many nice words? So, if you have four kids, will the fourth one be taxed heavily for simply been a product of the parents’ enjoyment of their married life? As John so succinctly put it the other day, instead of calling it the “black sheep of the family”, it could be the “tax sheep”. With all this good news, we had more joy the other day when we heard that petrol and diesel would space rocket (gone sky high already!) – guess instead of soup kitchens, what we sad middle-class eternally-squashed-from-all-sides Sri Lankans need are petrol donation centres dotted in key areas of the island… can you already see the long lines of cars stopped on all main highways for the lack of petrol/diesel? John says that he will buy a few bullock carts and have a retro-style transport service in and around Colombo. He even imagines it would be a “babe magnet”!!! Yeah, yeah, I guess what you are thinking is true in a manner of thinking, the budget could have been WORSE, like they could have taxed us for breathing oxygen (no that would not have been possible since in Colombo we only breathe carbon monoxide). So let’s all put a huge lock on purse strings, tighten up our belts, and SMILE away like Sri Lankans are supposed to do! Thanks to all of you who wrote to me throughout the past few weeks – truly enjoyed your little e-notes including the hate mail! AND if you have something that we should know about, you know where to contact me, DON’T YOU? notsoplainjane@gmail.com, where else? |
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