The term ‘blind tax’ is a common economic expression used to describe all forms of indiscriminate government levies that do not specifically target a particular sector or social group. Under such taxes, everyone is subjected to the same burden, whether they earn millions a month or live below the poverty line. This is a practice widespread in many developing countries with either underdeveloped financial systems or governments that deliberately resist financial reform, preferring to maintain a steady flow of revenue that can be controlled and tapped into whenever needed.
One of the clearest examples of this blind tax is stamp duty, where individuals are forced to purchase small adhesive stamps for every official document they need to issue or certify. This system makes no distinction between rich and poor, offering no exemptions, which is why it is labelled ‘blind’. In principle, such services should either be free or subject to a nominal fee, as they are basic governmental functions meant to serve citizens in return for the traditional taxes they already pay. For example, anyone visiting the Tahrir Complex to obtain a document is required to buy a stamp for 48 Egyptian pounds from a police officer. Beyond the frustration of dealing with bureaucratic inefficiencies, this blanket policy amounts to injustice—treating low-income individuals and the wealthy alike under a tax that should not exist in the first place.
This blind taxation takes various forms in developing nations as governments seek to maximise revenue, often through creative new fees on public services or, in some cases, arbitrary fines, depending on each country’s circumstances. Another particularly damaging example is what is known as ‘estimated taxation’—a crude and opaque method of tax assessment that thrives in financially disorganised systems, including Egypt. While the annual tax declaration campaign has been widely promoted and has brought some positive outcomes for the tax system in principle, ordinary citizens continue to suffer from the blind nature of taxation.
Under this new tax system, large businesses and those higher up the economic ladder have managed to adapt, ensuring that both taxpayers and the government benefit—provided that tax returns and accounting records are accurate. However, the vast majority of Egypt’s small-scale investors, particularly artisans and craftsmen, remain trapped under the crushing weight of blind taxation through the so-called ‘estimated assessment’ method. A struggling tradesman, for instance, might dutifully submit his tax declaration on time, only to find it rejected or questioned. This is hardly surprising, given the unstructured nature of this sector. But the real injustice begins when he is forced to deal with a tax assessor—who is often deliberately assigned from outside the local area to prevent any familiarity or bias and who also receives a commission based on how much tax they can extract. The assessor takes a cursory look around, scribbles down wildly exaggerated figures that have no basis in reality, and imposes an unpayable tax burden on the struggling tradesman. The only recourse is to challenge the assessment in court—yet another form of blind taxation that small-scale taxpayers must endure, while the wealthy navigate the system with ease.
Faced with this reality, small business owners are left with two choices: either shut down their enterprises and declare bankruptcy due to this arbitrary and unjust system, joining the swelling ranks of the unemployed, or resort to tax evasion—dodging the very system that is exploiting them. They do so by avoiding registration and constantly changing premises in a desperate game of cat and mouse, driven purely by their sense of financial injustice. This exposes the glaring contradiction at the heart of the government’s economic policies: it claims to support small investors and artisans, especially given their proven role in helping economies weather financial crises, yet it enforces blind taxation practices that do nothing but push more people into unemployment and drive historic trades to extinction. In the end, the only real beneficiaries of this system are the wealthy, while everyone else is left to struggle in its shadow.
This article is originally published by AlBorsa in Arabic and later AI-translated by South Push.