Of garbage and crafts

If you own a company or have an office and go to the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) to license it (so that you can begin to officially exist and then repeat the exercise every year), you may notice some strange fees. 

I asked myself if they should be there, and here is what I found.

The actual professional licensing for 100-square-metre office, which is the size of the consulting firm where I work, is JD200. 

Those fees are not a tax, but is usually money paid in lieu of services rendered, right?

No! Because the line immediately below the licence fee states that there is an additional fee of JD40 for trash collection.

So, GAM charges an extra fee for collecting the trash. The calculation formula assumes that one works 365 days a year and produces so much trash per day, which requires pickup.

But it is well established that in Jordan, like in the wealthy and developed countries we wish to emulate, we work 220 days a year — two-day weekends plus holidays. 

Hence, not only is GAM charging for something it already charged, it is charging for it at a higher rate.

But the story does not end up here. 

The line immediately below it charges one JD15 for the sign and advertising. At least in our case the fee was JD15.

There is even a calculation on the side of the page for the size of the sign, which was left blank in our case since the company does not have a sign on the wall of the building.

This is also bizarre since it is well known that GAM had banned company signs from being posted on buildings because they distort the look of the city.

Furthermore, landlords in general do not allow tenants to place their signs on the outer walls of the building, as signage would cause permanent damage to structure.

The saga continues: the line below charges another garbage fee. 

This one is JD33.22 (depends on the estimated trash production at one’s site, I guess) for using the garbage dump, making the cost of trash disposal JD73.22.

And this is not all! The story of money collection does not stop here. There is another fee, for crafts and industrial production, of JD24.

My licence says way on top that the company is licensed for managerial and economic consulting. I know that management is a skill, but it is definitely not classified as a craft or industry. Why, then, is there such a fee?

A licence fee of JD200 ended up being JD312.22, due to a 56 per cent surcharge made up of mindless additions.

Are these fees legal?

If I do not use a service, such as signage, how does GAM calculate my fees and why charge for it?

Why charge for trash collection on days when there are holidays, knowing full well that GAM employees do not show up on holidays?

And who decided to classify economics as a craft? 

How can we claim to welcome investment with charges as these? And why do we still wonder about the growing size of the informal sector, seeing that one would want to avoid all these headaches and fees?

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