The Day We Tried to Buy a Car

Today we tried to buy a car. We made headway, the car is now 400 meters from where I write and we are agreed as to price and payment. Documentation is now the hang up. What a hang up. Documentation would not be a hang up except that we wanted it to be legal. I am actually the one that probably made it so. The other parties were oscillating. I thought that we should have every thing be legal on our end so that if the Norwegian government wants to see what we did with their money before they give us another grant, we can show them. I also thought that it could be useful for not committing a felony by US federal law (A 2003 law makes it illegal for US organizations to dupe foreign governments. Actually, it might only apply to bribes… but still). The negotiated price was 6,600. So we wanted a receipt for 6,600. They wanted to give a receipt for like 50 dollars. The car had been imported for around “50 dollars” this way they would not have pay 8% tax. Also we would have to pay a 5% registration tax for the value of the car.

From their point of view, it is simply win-win. All parties make avoid wasting money on the corrupt government. All parties get what they want. They were more frustrated and sad by our unwillingness to help ourselves than angry. They tried to get us to go for the 50 dollar solution literally 30 times. They had the time to do so because we waited around all day for some mysterious boss (of the import place where we needed paperwork from) to show up. He showed up while we were eating a late breakfast lunch at 2:30. Naturally he was not keep on loosing $500 of profit. Also it is apparently impossible to change the import value once it has been documented.

It all ended with us at the registration department. There some guy helped us come up with the plan that we would have the seller “buy” the car from the import company (he never registered it) and then we would buy it from him for 6,600. But we cannot get a receipt for this sale I think. So, it is all a shit show and all the frustration apparently is for not. It will all be technically legal though (I don’t get hung up on being technically legal in my personal life but running/working for an organization is not a place for one’s personal morality to loom over the law). If the Norwegians ask about their money our president will just explain or make excuses. The car will be registered in our director’s name in case we get audited.

It is frustrating that the whole system is basically set up to dysfunction. It was all backwards. At every step it resulted in more trouble and money to do things legally than illegally. It is because everything here can be bought and people regard paying taxes as basically being extorted. It is frustrating to be a part of the problem and not the solution. It is also part of a bigger problem for the Alpine Fund as an NGO. Bigger consistent donors want us to open our books and have receipts for everything. But no one but the most expensive (and often foreign owned) establishments give receipts and NGO are taxed here just like everyone else. The whole financial basis of the organization is actually illegal because we use an ATM to access our money from a foreign account or something to avoid paying 8% on every bit of money we take out. Our director claims we just play with the kids and that the crazy foreigners just pay for everything out of pocket. Basically we claim that we all but do nothing.

Then we arrive at the catch-22, the NGO cannot grow to meet its potential because the bigger donors want documentation before they give. We cannot give documentation because we are too small and need every last penny to stay afloat.

It all works out in the end but it often surprising how we get their.