Well it's that time of year again when the government asks the business community to visit several of its bureau's to get a letter for them confirming you've paid your various taxes so they can tax you even more to provide a license to operate.

Under the threat of fines and/or jail time everyone has to traipse to the National Insurance Board, Bahamas Customs, the health department and who knows where else as this process develops to obtain a letter of good standing to take to the Ministry of Finance.

Let me restate that. The business community is forced, under he threat of a fine and/or jail time to do the tax bureau's job.

Instead of them sending a directive to all other departments to confirm that each business is in good or bad standing they make the business community drive up and down for them. Facing the usual lost file challenges and more.

Then on top of this, business license tax is charged as a percentage of sales, not net profit. So many businesses are taxed more than they earn in net profit, particularly in these tough economic times. Surely the last thing a government should want to do is tax people out of business?

To make matters worse, every single business has to apply for all these letters during January each year so every department is overwhelmed. As a fellow businessman suggested, why not split all businesses up throughout the year to streamline the process?

But as Jerry Kirkpatrick wrote in his recent article, Bureaucracy Buries the Human Spirit with Paperwork: (here…):

"As Ludwig von Mises has taught us, bureaucracy is not a large, hierarchically structured organization, whether of big government or big business. It is the government’s method of managing its affairs, which means it is the “peaceful” method of managing coercion. Laws of the land, a budget for each bureau, and regulatory rules dictate to citizens what they can and cannot do. Disobedience brings punishment. The method is top-down; the higher authority must be obeyed.'

Is there any wonder we are such laggards in the world's ease of doing business survey?