Flagship fashion - Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants

60 May 2012
Let’s get fiscal
Get your daily dose of Nury’s humour at www.mrjam.org
Confession: I paid
no tax this year
The Inland Revenue Department
picks the wrong columnist to ignore,
says Nury Vittachi
Ipaid no tax this year. NOT ONE DOL-
LAR. Yep, I’m in the same category as
those evil, disgusting super rich billionaire
dudes who are as rich as Croesus
while having less tax liability than Croesus’
earwax.
How come? Well, it’s NOT because I have
suddenly become an evil, disgusting super
rich billionaire dude. (I’m still working on
that.)
It’s because I didn’t get a tax bill. Some
people would be happy to be missed off the
green envelope list. But in truth I wasn’t.
You see, I’ve written at least four articles explaining
that I LIKE paying tax. I like being
on the moral high ground of paying more
tax than billionaires. And I love the thought
that I personally finance a metre or two of
Hong Kong’s roads, a brick or two in a public
toilet, a light bulb somewhere on a Kowloon
lamppost. Little things please little minds.
But as the weeks went by, and the letterbox
remained empty of green bombs, I
became concerned. What if my tax bill had
gone astray? What if I was jailed for nonpayment
of tax, causing my reader to think me
a hypocrite? Would he stop reading my column,
causing me to become an entirely useless
unproductive person (setting aside the
fact that columnists are already entirely useless
unproductive people)?
I wrote to the Hong Kong tax department,
pointing out that I had sent them money annually
for 25 years and was aggrieved at being
denied the chance to do so this year.
While waiting for a reply, my nerves
were badly jangled by an article I read about
“ What if I was jailed for nonpayment of
tax, causing my reader to think me a
hypocrite?”
American rapper Beanie Sigel. While doing
the normal rapper thing (spending time in
jail, handling illegal weapons, fighting with
street gangs), Sigel failed to file adequate tax
returns. He was arrested. It strikes me that
some people ought to be cut some slack. Can
you imagine a tax official marching up to
Genghis Khan and saying: “Congratulations
on conquering the known world, Mr. Khan,
but unfortunately I have to arrest you for
poor form-filling skills.”
The move to make billionaires behave
in a more moral manner (now doesn’t that
sound like a lost cause?) is spreading. In the
United States, Republican leadership candidates
were forced to reveal their tax bills.
Similar things are happening in the United
Kingdom. Until now, illegal tax evasion
was illegal and other ways of not paying tax
weren’t. But now the U.K. government draws
a line between “tax planning” and “mischievous
avoidance.” Mischievous is a posh word
for “naughty.” The U.K. government has
made it clear that “naughty” is not exactly
the same as “illegal,” but both have to be
fixed. Tax evasion is punished by the courts
and “mischief” by the press and public.
It’s happening in Australia, too. One billionaire
was complaining loudly about the
government’s mining tax, but he lost all
sympathy when a newspaper reported that
his private company hadn’t paid any tax for
three years.
Anyway, back to the Hong Kong tax department.
A reply arrived a few days later. It
was a cryptic little note saying only that a “refund
cheque” had been sent to me. I concluded
that my wife and I must have paid too much in
recent years, so now they’re paying us.
Oh well, it’ll be good to have no tax paperwork
to do. In April, a study of 19,541 deaths
by the American Medical Association revealed
that taxpayers are significantly more
likely to die on the roads on tax filing day
than other days. Forbes magazine offered
three explanations: 1) Stress makes people
drive badly. 2) People drink after completing
their forms. 3) God punishes taxpayers
for lying.
Probably all three are true. In the meantime,
if you are a world conqueror too busy to
fill in your tax form, I have time on my hands.
Nury Vittachi is a bestselling author, columnist, lecturer and
TV host. He wrote the Institute’s first storybook, May Moon
and the Secrets of the CPAs, and the latest one, May Moon
Rescues the World Economy, published in 2010.