Two trips with Grgi that I think happened this month. (Nope, the other was back in january, which I deducted from other facts while writing)
One was a gasoline run north. We visited our customers in Čoka, interesting guys, three pals who came together to found a trading company after leaving their local kombinat (but they'd still take us out to dinner in the basement of its HQ, which was an old count's castle). I had the long banknote which Go cut from a few dozen now worthless banknotes, splicing them into something meter and a half long, which had something like two hundred zeros. It was neatly rolled.
Their office being closed, we went to the apartment of one of them. I'd expect a house, but just about any local kombinat would have some bit of novogradnja for its engineers and managers, and he had an apartment in one of those. Over a coffee I asked
- how's business?
- not bad, considering the times.
- if your firm is solid, I'd consider investing myself, depending on how much you'd ask.
- well, I'll have to see with my partners... what's the offer?
- let's see... if this may be enough
...and then I'd unfurl the long banknote to its full length. He laughed his ass off, and then took the banknote and rolled it back again, to repeat the scene when the other two guys come.
They told us about the fourth guy, owner of a slaughterhouse nearby and also some trading company, just that he lived in Čoka but his business was mostly across the river... and he opened a supermarket in Szeged. And learned how VAT works. And explained it to them. So far, we had the wholesale tax and retail tax, plus excise tax on tobacco and gasoline, which were calculated on point of sale - so the wholesale would pay the excise if any, retail would pay the wholesale tax, end customer would pay the retail tax (unless he supplied a valid statement of purpose to the invoice, so if buying stuff for production, no retail tax). The tax would be paid monthly. Now with VAT, everyone pays it at each transaction, adds his margin, charges it to the next guy. So it's actually its margin which gets taxed in this step, which is why it's called "value added". The trouble is that you have to keep paperwork on everything you bought, to calculate the amount of tax you paid, to subtract from the amount of it you charged, and pay to the state right away, I'd say three times a month. The further trouble is that you're paying it at procurement, before you sold anything. Or if you sold, but haven't been paid yet, regardless - you still have to pay it within ten days.
Having heard this story, the three guys just sat silently for a while. After a couple of minutes, one says "you can only sell cheaper than you bought...". "Exactly what I did!" said the guy, "my supermarket is across the street from the green market. So I'd have the cashier accidentally ring a crate of juice or mineral water, while it was a crate of beer. Then I'd have a guy take that crate across and sell it at near restaurant price. Good money, but you have to keep it low - have to have some other accident as well where you lose money, or else it becomes suspicious, and have to keep the error below one percent of the daily total, or else the finance inspectors catch on you and you're done".
The unrolling of banknotes repeated on our way back, when we had to cross the river on a ferry. It turned out that Grgi and I together didn't have enough cash to pay, but we were already halfway across when the guy came to charge. We surrendered what money we had and then started rummaging through our pockets for more... and then I pulled out the roll, unfurled it... and the rest was paid by renting the roll so he could go over the whole raft and show it to everybody.
The guy we went to see was a small customer, only perhaps two apps, but he needed something and was willing to promise three barrels of gasoline. Which we got (I guess payment was mutually discharged with DBA). I was actually surprised that our yugo pickup could carry that much. Over dinner, he explained why he needed the intervention, whatever it was - it's that he doesn't play local politics. He's good with most of the guys, but still there's occasionally a wink from above to press on smaller entrepreneurs and squeeze as much money as possible (at that time, the wife of Eči was in so-called "Kertes' brigades", which was usually four or five inspectors on a rampage, with a list of firms to visit and amount of money to fine each - each member of the team would spend a week on the tour and come home with 10000DEM). So he told the finance inspector, in heavy hungarian accent and grammar, "You come look my books, and if you look, you find many anything. I tell you what to look and you tell me what it cost, and we save whole afternoon and we go to dinner, what do you say?".
At home, the TV died and I had to find some gasoline to take it to be fixed. It's two trips, and it doesn't matter that the repair guy is near ruža - I still need to start the car, one kilometer or not.
In other news, the elections were on and the girls told us to vote for Milan Panić. He was mom's "istomišljenik" (person who thinks the same as you, don't know if that word exists in english at all).
The voting register was doctored in so many ways, that even one member of the electoral committee for last election wasn't registered to vote this time.