SOME 1.7 million professionals paid an average of P5,764 in taxes last year, said smiling Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares as she launched a tax-evasion drive against the professional class or people who, other than entertainers, need to take board exams to earn the living for which they paid so much to qualify.

Kim’s move is right but her rationale is silly.

You cannot average meaningfully the earnings of all doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects and entertainers, most of whom earn a pittance and only a small handful of whomever slip into the few slots in the professional class where fortunes are readily made and never accurately reported for tax purposes.

Sure, there are lawyers and law firms that are notoriously rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and they must cheat on taxes, given the size of their fortunes and the lavishness of their lifestyles. But they are, perforce of function, a discreet handful.

Most doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects and particularly entertainers earn small for most of their careers if not to the end of their professional lives. Some of the latter supplement their meager earnings when still young by lying on their backs to, shall we say, pleasure politically privileged professionals despite the latter’s advanced age or repellent appearance.

Averaging the earnings or takings of 1.7 million professionals by dividing their total declared taxes of P9.8 billion to yield a pitiful P5,764 is inaccurate and unfair—and meaningless in policy terms.

The impoverished majority of professionals live hand-to-mouth, barely able to make ends meet not just at home but in the offices whose appointments they can barely pay to maintain. Fearing harassment and feeling helpless, they will cough up whatever is assessed by the BIR, paying it all across the table to bank tellers or less under the table to BIR collectors.

The tiny politically privileged handful will simply make the right calls and continue to underdeclare their incomes and pay the right taxes on their real wealth.

It would be fairer to most people who worked so hard and paid so much to qualify as professionals if Kim had said the BIR will go after professionals whose declared incomes cannot explain their lavish lifestyles—such as having office buildings of their own and rising to mansions from manure. That will put the fear of God even on the Godless crew of the privileged professional few who will realize that all the resources of the BIR under Kim will be focused entirely on catching them rather than being scattered among the multitudes of their impoverished professional colleagues.

Finance Secretary Purisima, on the other hand, cited the right statistic: that 80 percent of the P136-billion tax collections on net income and profits are accounted for by fixed-wage and salary earners whose taxes on income or profits are deducted at source so that they are denied the equal opportunity, as I have repeatedly argued, to cheat on taxes like big-time entrepreneurs, billionaire businessmen and well-heeled because well-connected professionals—simply put, the legal and accounting bagmen of presidents and justices, not to mention presidents and judges.

Purisima unwittingly questioned Kim’s inapplicable annual average of P5,764 in taxes paid by the average professional, saying that the average was P68,000 per self-employed or professional earner.

But Purisima was wrong to promise that every year the BIR will publish the ranking of the top taxpayers among professionals who will necessarily be longtime medical practitioners (who will have earned their fortunes) and the politically privileged few professionals who are influence peddlers and bagmen of public officials. On top of cheating on the much bigger taxes they should be paying, these professionals will be honored for unavoidably paying more than the vast majority of honest professionals so as not to appear too bulgar in their evasions.

Rather than honor the top professional taxpayers, announce that they are to be singled out for lifestyle checks to explain why, much as are the taxes they do pay, more should not be expected, based on their high living and inexplicably extensive possessions.

It was even more wrong for Purisima to say that the higher taxes paid perforce by perverse professionals—the aforesaid bagmen, influence-peddlers and the like—will serve as a benchmark by which to prosecute the vast multitude of professionals who pay much less because they make their living the honest way and without harm to the public interest.

The main problem with the Noy administration has been the weirdness of its rhetoric.

The aim is right—justice, honesty and fiscally cautious government. Regarding which I do not believe it is wrong that Noy would rather do nothing than do something wrong in public-sector spending. Given the small percentage of the budget that can go to new projects (some 5 percent to 10 percent) I also do not believe that public spending makes that much of a difference in national economic performance. Something else is happening to the economy other than a tight-fisted government. It may be tied to the continuing free fall of the developed economies in the rest of the world.

That weirdness was first exemplified by Noy’s bold but crass announcement that, since he never took the LRT to go to Congress and later the Senate, why should fares be subsidized for those who do take the LRT to work.

I can think of two reasons.

The first is that those go to Congress do not work.

Second, that they have expensive cars to take them, followed by quiet or noisy but still intrusive and expensive gas-guzzling escorts.

Whereas, those who do take the LRT are the most productive economic elements of our society—wage earners who do not, because they cannot, cheat on their taxes as Secretary Purisima woefully explained.

Why did Noy have to say that? He should have said, much as honest wage earners depend on the LRT to get to work the way politicians never have to, the government cannot afford the subsidy anymore, with apologies.

Mercifully, Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas prevailed on the President to continue the subsidy.

The other weird thing about this administration is the gleefulness with which it announces highly unpopular measures like finally collecting from those who can least spare the money the VAT on expressway tolls that even the revenue-insatiable GMA administration could not bring itself to do.

Do not smile as if you were proud of the courage to screw the common people.

Rather look contrite that it is unavoidable for them to bear the greater burden of the public good.

And, for God’s sake, do not appear to relish threatening vendors in bazaars with prosecution if they are caught failing to issue receipts. They make peanuts compared to Kim’s political masters and their circle of friends, yet they employ in backyard activities, like making jams and placemats, those whom the economy cannot accommodate in steadier jobs.

Put on the gloating face only when you are singling out lawyers who have been bagmen (the public knows them by name), the accountants and consultants who enable their clients to cheat on taxes. Forget engineers and architects because they have no choice but to declare their incomes correctly. The former work for companies and are fixed-wage earners for the most part; the latter know that professional fees are reported to the BIR by clients as deductible or depreciable expenses.