Coffers are dry, so government should consider taxing oxygen

By PETER WANYONYI

We are fast running out of things to tax, but the government is blind to the most obvious of all — the air we breathe.

This is not as inane as it sounds. Air is a natural resource like food, water and land. If these are taxed, why shouldn’t air be?

It’s not even that difficult to tax air. We already know how many breaths the average person takes in a day. This number goes up if the person is fat, and is lower if the person is a lightweight.

The Ministry of Health would mandate that every Kenyan must attend a twice-annual weigh-in.

All Kenyans weighing between, say, 40 and 80 kilogrammes would be charged a flat fresh-air-tax rate. Anyone more than 80 kilogrammes would be taxed at an ever increasing rate until at 120 kilogrammes. Onwards, the rate goes through the roof.

The same would be done for those who are underweight but are over 18 years of age.

Crisp air

The benefits would be immense. Everyone has to breathe, so everyone would be liable for the tax we could the ‘Gasp Tax’.

Those who are fat, like me, and are crushing our health system under the punishing demands of their insane obesity would have to pay more.

The money collected can be used to repair the beds they break when they take their gout to hospital for treatment.

Those who weigh next to nothing are just as a bad a burden on the economy, because they are not consuming enough food to earn the country much needed VAT.

The taxes they pay would go towards firming up demand for farmers’ produce, and perhaps to subsidise fertiliser.

Of course, air in places like Nairobi would be cheaper than the clean and fresh crisp air of, say, Mount Kenya. Let’s tax it! And maybe we should rethink hut tax...