His Royal Highness the tax inspector

OH God.

I’ve been staring at the page since July 1. You’d think my brain would be smoking with the effort. Instead it’s frozen over.

I am doing my tax. Actually, I’m staring at my tax.

Actually, it’s etax. The Australian Taxation Office’s way of making my life simpler. I’m sure it will.

My brain went numb when I looked at it last year; consequently I am a year behind with my tax return and I shall soon be in prison, where I’m told life is much simpler.

I am log-jammed on page eight. It’s where you fill in your name. There isn’t much you can say that’s good about filling in forms, but at least filling in your name was always easy. It got you off to a good start.

True, you’d founder eventually on the prime-cost or base-value method of depreciating your assets, but at least you were safe on a page where the choices were Mr, Mrs, Miss or Ms.

Wrong.

Etax offers a choice of 117 titles. Everything from Abbot to Wing Commander. There’s even a space for Swami, which is reassuring because I imagined that bearded hippies in nighties probably didn’t pay tax.

And just to give us all a sense (a false sense, I suspect) that everything is fair and just in the world there’s even a place for His and Her Royal Highnesses. In a sensitive touch of good old Aussie egalitarianism it’s sandwiched between Gunner and Honourable.

After that it’s all downhill.

Wrong again. Before that it’s all downhill.

If you go back to page one of etax you’ll find His Royal Highness Michael D’Ascenzo, a well-covered man who smiles complacently through his glasses, assuring us that we won’t get into any trouble if we follow eight simple rules.

Number four is: “Read all the preliminary screens and related help topics marked by blue text”.

This is why he’s smiling complacently. Reading the preliminary screens and the related blue text will take an accomplished speed reader 68 billion years. So long as they don’t stop for sleep, food or trips to the lavatory.

The alternative is to wing it, and if you do, guess what! Ha ha! You will not be covered by HRH D’Ascenzo’s offer of immunity from mutilation and death!

And even if you had 68 billion years to spare, it wouldn’t do you any good because you’d also need an interpreter. Not an Arabic or Croatian or Macedonian interpreter, which the tax office very kindly offers you, but a tax interpreter – a rare species of homo sapien that is routinely and ritually slaughtered (by ATO staff) just before the beginning of every tax year.

Just when you need them: to explain what it means if you’re a dependant of the deceased and the Tax Office has issued a reasonable benefit (RBL) determination showing an excessive component? And if not the death benefit eligible termination payment is not taxable.

Does that mean they’re going to kill me, but I won’t be charged tax when they do? Oh well, it was bound to happen. I’ll stay frozen to page eight of my etax until this time next year and then I’ll be three years behind.

May as well switch it off and go and spend some of my taxable income on a Rolls-Royce and a crown. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

Or, to put it in etax terms, for an HRH as a Mr.