May 20, 2006

Horse 550 - Unfiled Tax Returns

I work as an accountant and particularly this time of year most of my work involves the calculation and lodgement of tax returns for clients. Most of the returns are fairly simple but there's odd person who has a few unfiled returns from previous years.

Enter Justice Larry McLate*:

Justice McLate* has just retired from his position on the bench for the court house in Banana Park*. McLate told us that there'd been quite a while since he'd lodged his last return and wanted to lodge them so that he wouldn't end up in gaol and so that his children would not end up with much of his estate. He didn't tell us that the "little while" since he'd last lodged a tax return was for the financial year 1955/6.

1955/6? What ?! O_o

The first problem is that he didn't even have a tax file number, so we applied for one. The second problem was that most of these years can't be lodged electronically and have to be done... dn dn daaaaa - ON PAPER!!

The Tax Office were very helpful in this regard. They sent a man around with a stack of paper which was a photocopy of every relevant form back until 1950. 1950? What?! How do they keep these sorts of things?

So I've been filling in returns in £/s/d rather than $/c and I can tell you that doing stuff in 12s 20s and the rest is far more fun than 100s. I want £s back... sort of.

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