The Polish Baker who was bankrupted with taxes on charity bread gifts.

I have heard that a Polish baker named Waldemar Gronowski, who lives in or near Legnica, was punished by the government for giving some of his bread to a Catholic charity. His gifts were illegal because he did not pay a tax before he gave them so that the hungry people could be fed. The punishment was a fine for the unpaid taxes, in the amount of 250,000 zloty. Because the baker could not pay the taxes, he had to go out of business.

It is hard for me to imagine a government becoming so corrupt that it would do this. The government is forcing the instinct for helping other people, which is strong in Whites, into having only criminal expressions, such as those tax-evading anonymous food donations that the church has been getting.

Pity this poor baker. He tried to do good works, maybe because he believes it is what Jesus would have done in his place... but the government caught him doing it and applied a penalty! And the government ruined his business because it did not receive the customary bribe before permission is granted to make charity gifts.

I think the Polish government must have some kind of Monsters in it, and I also think that the Poles should find those Monsters and destroy them. Of course I think that the US goverment probably has the same problem with Monsters that the Polish government does, and the Americans should destroy the Monsters who are over there.

That's sad about the baker. The American government wouldn't do that. They only charge taxes on the money people earn, not for items they give away. And if a person gives money or items to a charity, the government charges them less taxes at the end of the tax year. A lot of rich people give money away so they can pay less taxes.

Some Polish tabloids made this guy a national hereo. In fact he was a crook. The authorities are behind him not for giving to the charities but for selling for profit and reporting as given to the charities. (Charities received only a small portion of bread the baker reported to the financial authorities as given away.)

I have no idea whether well_informed is telling the truth or not. Maybe he is. But in the USA, there are disinformation specialists working in the media on behalf of our federal government, and every time the US government sends its federal police to murder somebody, there are many false stories in the press and on TV that defame the character of the person that the government wants to assassinate. So my thinking is that the same thing happens in other countries. On the other hand, maybe well_informed is correct; perhaps this time the guy really was a crook. No way to know for sure.

And the truth is:

The baker was in fact - giving away old bread to charity. He was not aware that he should have paid the Vallue Added Tax. (If he would thrown it to the dump - everything would be ok).

The tax was eventually remitted after media outrage.

But the tax collectors took revenge on the baker. They started detailed tax controls of all of the bakers' buisness partners. So they all stoped cooperating with him one-by-one.

And that was the reason he went bunkrupt.

Let us not forget it is indeed the tax collectors, not the government, who checked and fined the baker. It is often said that local officials have too much power over ordinary people and can ruin them if they fancy doing so. Whatever the details of the story are, it is the tax bureau that overfined the man and produced yet one more unemployed.

poor man :(