In a bid to assuage the people’s hardship and grant them a reed of relief and show it cares, the government on new year’s day proclaimed its philanthropic decision to grant each and every one of the country’s citizens above 18, a bespoke complimentary gift of a brand new TIN, each one exclusively engraved with the owner’s name and special identification number to prevent theft and unauthorized use.

Furthermore, it was subtlety conveyed that, as an additional precaution to make it even more secure, the Government would use expensive state-of-the-art, cutting-edge technology and tag each TIN with an encrypted QR Code to track its current location and live status.

Once upon a time not so long ago, it had been a status symbol only the privileged rich could afford to own.  The ultimate accolade one could aspire to gain. The highest honour the state could bestow in recognition of one’s accumulated riches.

Oft such high honour came accompanied with dark rumour spread by the envious, that it had been obtained through the influence of political office, or by pulling the strings of nepotism or through the simple expediency of outright graft and corruption.

Now no more. In this enlightened age of the common man and woman, the government has in one bold swoop, made TIN the common lot of all. In one profound inspirational flash of genius, the government abolished the hitherto privilege and preserve of the rich by offering free TINS to all above 18.

By this one act alone, equalising the richest man in the country with the lowest of the lowly in the most poverty stricken hamlet in the island, the government balanced the social scales, thereby transcending the divisions of race, caste, religion, creed or wealth.

The rich, the poor, the young, the old, the clergy, the laity, the employed, the jobless, the single, the married,  the divorced, the separated, the heterosexual, the gay, the transgender, the straight, the judge, the serial rapist, the remandee, the lifer,  the free, the jailed, the good, the bad, the honest, the corrupt, the thrifty, the spendthrift, the sick or the healthy, to cut the long list short, all citizens from every diverse walk of life, from all diverse social strata,  irrespective of rank, station or  office occupied, no matter their born pedigree or class, were made equal – though not at birth – at their coming of age before the watchful eye of the omnipotent, omniscient Big Brother at the State’s Inland Revenue Department by simply accepting the government’s compulsory free gift of a brand new exclusive TIN.

And just in the remote event, some stubbornly refuse to accept this gratuitous honour – like Bernard Shaw once did when he declined to accept his king’s kind offer to bestow on him the honour of a knighthood, tersely replying, ‘Being Bernard Shaw is sufficient honour’ – the thoughtful government had even planned to endow them, in lieu of the free TIN honour, a cash gift of 50,000 bucks with no questions asked.

Perhaps, Finance Ministry officials, too, realised that the 50,000 buck ‘incentive’ was carrying philanthropy a bridge too far and announced on Wednesday they were temporarily withdrawing the attractive offer.

Bad news, maybe, for get-rich-quick opportunists but all above 18, including schoolchildren, Samurdhi recipients, Ping Padi beneficiaries and even beggars, will still retain the untrammelled right to flaunt their exclusive TINS when opening bank accounts or buying new SUVs or buying new houses. It will be the gateway passport to a brave new financial world where once, only the rich were permitted entry, the visa card that will compel one – as an old American VISA card slogan put it – to ‘never leave home without it’.

But wherever there’s game, there’s always the spoilsport to queer the pitch. No sooner had the Government announced its laudable offer of a free TIN for everyone, a retired Deputy Commissioner General of the Inland Revenue Department, N.M.M. Mifly swiftly declared, in an article published in the Daily FT on Wednesday, that the Government lacked the legal clout to give away free TINS on the basis of age.

He stated that, neither the Inland Revenue Department nor the Finance Ministry is legally empowered to grant TINS to all above 18. Age is not the legal criterion for selection. According to section 102 of the relevant Act, ‘Every person who is liable to furnish a return of income for a year of assessment, shall register with the Commissioner General’. Furthermore, under section 126 of the Act, ‘Every person chargeable with income tax under this Act shall furnish a tax return.’

Therefore, only those with annual incomes above Rs. 1,200,000 are legally liable to furnish returns of income.

Social observers noted with dismay that there was something rather odd, somewhat cruel, something surreal that somehow sounded like a sick joke, in asking millions beggared by the nation’s economic collapse to compulsorily queue up to receive their free TINS.

They pointed out that to ask these unfortunate people who, perforce, have been condemned to live a hand to mouth existence, who know not where their next meal will come from nor when it will appear, who have nothing to claim as their own but their tears and toil and nothing to declare but their hunger and woe, whose mountainous liabilities far exceed the combined total of their annual incomes, is to perversely mock the wretched fate of millions of Lankans below the poverty belt.

They cynically asked whether these countless, faceless millions who had been largely ignored and left to wallow in the squalor of poverty, who had so far applied in person for nothing more than Samurdhi or Ping Padi membership, could be expected to own or have access to fancy laptops or smartphones and fill out complicated inland revenue applications and register online, which even defies the learned who hire tax specialists to fill and file for them?

They asked if the entire exercise was an attempt by the government to court their vote in this election year with the implied promise of raising their financial status and granting them the badge of affluence?

But some political commentators hailed the government decision to give away free TINS as the most laudable, pragmatic and ideal decision taken in living memory.  At long last the government has finally realised what the people require most to survive. It has cut through the fog of deception and – instead of giving them bland tinsel gift like free internet, cellphones and gold chains – has begun the long due implantation of an admirable policy devised to meet the exigencies of time.

A policy that will fire the entrepreneurial spirit in every soul to rise, and make them move away from being dependent on the welfare state to live another day. A policy that will arm them with the capital tool to make them all self-sufficient: the symbolic yet practical tool, the indispensable tin to beg for their supper.