Even after President Hosni Mubarak had asked the Ministry of Finance to allow citizens to present their real estate tax statements every ten years instead of every five years, everybody in Egypt is still worried. Whether it is on the streets of this country or in places of public gathering, the talk is all about the burdens the property tax would add to the crippled budgets of the majority of the nation's families. "I've been hoping that the President would intervene and relieve us of the cares the new real estate tax law brought us," said Mona Essam, a civil servant. "I hope this matter would be settled for good," she told the Mail in an interview. Essam, 45, was echoing the views of many in this country since the law started to be applied late last year. Millions of property owners had submit their property statements in December to avoid fives. Despite the fact that the ministry had extended the grace period for submitting the real estate statements until the end of March, many still think the law should be totally eliminated. This brought millions of angry people to real estate tax offices nation wide. But the overcrowding and the hasty way the statements ought to be presented spread a feeling of humiliation everywhere. This urged many of the members of the Islamic Research Centre, an influential arm of Al-Azhar, to say the law had violated Islamic laws. The members of the centre had even called for the dismissal of the Minister of Finance Youssef Botrous Ghali. "Our Government has turned into a mere collector of taxes," said Mohamed Osman, a member of the academy. "The Ministry of Finance doesn't care a single whit about the protestations of citizens," he added. The law exempts owners whose properties are less than half a million Egyptian pounds (US$91,743), but this does nothing to allay the fears of the millions of limited income people in this country. They say they can not suffer extra financial burdens while the prices of food rise day after day. "The Government is driving us crazy," said Mohamed Muneer, a 36-year-old civil engineer. "We can't tolerate any more financial loads," he added. Despite all the fury expressed at the law, the Government keeps silent most of the time. In some of his rare appearances, Ghali tried to defend the law and calm down fears related to it, but this seems to have done nothing. "True, the law makes it necessary for property owners to pay a tax, more than about 95 per cent of property owners won't pay this tax," Ghali said during a discussion in December. He and other ministry officials say the law would bring in much-needed cash to the empty coffers of the government. The President himself reiterated the same during the inauguration of the Cairo International Book Fair, saying the state treasury was in need of the money citizens would pay for real estate taxes. This, however, makes Muneer, the civil engineer, angry. The feeling he and like-minded citizens get is that "the government only cares about its survival". "They should stop pressuring us," he said. "I think the government will tax us on the air we breathe in the future," he added.
