In that acute financial atmosphere known as home this old artful dodger smiled a sad, defeated smile at the new Federal steps to make people pay all their taxes.
Far down through the misty computers of time my spools gather dust in the Treasury like scalps in a tepee, broken symbols of a man who never dared but always shared.
Tax avoidance avoided me, deductions deduced me as hopeless and then there are the fiscal near and dear who have held out their pudgy hands ever since they could lisp “20 cents”. Even as I lifted her veil after the wedding bells rang out among the supercilious steeple pigeons, she asked me if I had my cheque book.
She has been my cheque mate ever since.
It seems I never had what some of my friends call business acumen. I thought this was a kind of pimply rash but according to crafty-looking acquaintances who look out the corners of their eyes, speak out the corners of their mouths and cut corners and throats if they get half a chance, it is the art of financial footwork.
After all, all work and no play makes tax a dull ploy, if you’ll pardon me, Mr. Howard, for a brave pun.
I have never formed a family company. Who wants to and why should I? I’m in their company all the time. Income shared is income spared, says my tax consultant. Down our way income snaffled is income raffled.
The simplistic assault on the dollar in our house does not require the merger of banks, or cool accountants looking sideways at the Taxation Act. It’s merely an upending of trousers, a milking of wallets, change recovery from the carpet and a chartering of cheques for that frail little outpost of penury which my smiling acolytes call my current account.
Friends have told me of tax avoidance schemes but I know of only two worthwhile ones; hiding in the Himalayas or sitting in a diving bell at the bottom of the Mindanao trench. Even then they’d find me.
Why haven’t the tax people enlisted my family—determination, detection, the reading of expressions, the pumping of the intended victim, pocket picking, hard-luck stories, mugging in the kitchen—all the paraphernalia of persuasion and extraction is theirs to command.
Daddy. I’ve taken my allowance.
Darling child, leave Daddy now while he takes his tea and beats time to his blood pressure.
Mind you, I have friends with tricky personalities. They are always talking about tax lurks. I know where it lurks, in dark corners, where it hisses at me. “Psst, like filthy amendment?”
I said to the nice girl in our bank “Do you think I might have a little interest?”
“If you were 30 years younger and had hair you might,” she said. She went on bundling her notes.
You see, I am not one for Mr. Howard’s men. On the great tax map in the Treasury a small tattered flag is attached to me with the caption “Occupied Territory.”
Soon will come the clump of June 30 jack boots, through the winter mist will loom that dark, terrible form.
Have I dodged anything this year apart from my relatives? Have I formed spurious companies, claimed for my dog and cockatoo, made numerous business trips or maintained a harem on the Gold Coast?
And what about developmental works, what about depreciation? There’s been plenty of that and phrases such as “layabout,” “rat,” and “never does a hand’s turn” spring to mind.
What about wear-and tear of plant? Well, you try telling them about our diseased aspidistra and our balding maidenhair!
Indeed, I am a man with more money than cents. I have a shoebox of old cheque butts—not for fancy footwork but full of financial arsenic and old lace. So please don’t come knocking on my door. Please don’t interrogate me!
Like the plague, I just want to be avoided.
Max Fatchen