In 1952, Philippines signed the Florence Agreement, a U.N. treaty guaranteeing the free flow of “educational, scientific, and cultural materials” between countries and declaring that imported books should be duty-free.

In 2008, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books was a success which apparently attracted the attention of customs officials.

Now, the said agreement is now an argument.

Taxing everything. Taxing gadgets.  Taxing  text messages/sms ? Taxing books? What a retard corrupt country.

This is the reason why there’s no new book titles in the Philippine bookstores lately. Some booksellers and book importers are still trying to negotiate just so they can bring their books inside.

The government’s say on this is that:  For lack of a comma after the word “books,” they argued that only books “used in book publishing” were tax-exempt.

“What kind of book is that?” one publisher asked me afterward. “A book used in book publishing.” Dispatches from Manila – Timothy McSweeney | The great book blockade of 2009.