I like to keep the taxman at arm's length, not because I have anything to hide but simply because I hate the aggravation he causes me with his silly questions, as he did several times in the late 1970s when I was still working overseas and he kept asking me what my "gross income from all world sources" was.
There had always been the ‘183-day’ test, which I easily passed every time, but the taxman kept asking away, as he had first done in 1978, when he asked me, "1. Were you born in Australia?" and "7. State your reasons why you consider yourself to be a resident or non-resident of Australia", and, of course, "14. Details of all income earned by you from sources within and outside Australia in the year ended 30 June 1978".
All this was done in those pre-computer days by typewriter, and so I would pull out my portable OLYMPIA typewriter, which I had bought many years earlier in New Guinea, and type, "Please explain your definition of 'resident' and 'non-resident' which presumably is quite different for tax purposes from the casual sense of the word" (which was long before "Please explain!" had become an iconic catchphrase).
Deafening silence for another year, until, like a dog with a bone, he trotted out the same questions the next year, and all the other years while I lived and worked in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Burma, Indonesia, Samoa, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Greece, on and on and on. Perhaps he thought I lived inside that PO Box 42 in Duffy in the A.C.T.
I've been back in Australia for decades now, but my distaste for the taxman is as strong as ever. To keep keeping him at arm's length, I still prepare my own tax return, but then let H&R Block lodge it for me.
Better them than me to "Block" the taxman's silly questions. This has been my first year with H&R Block, and I can highly recommend them.
