Feeling Overtaxed?

Despite his amazing knowledge and powers of deduction, Albert Einstein admitted that “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” 

Wind the clock back 21 years when GST was introduced and I’d agree with him. Accounts clerks like myself and the accountants we worked alongside suddenly had to deal with a multiplication of administration as we were hurled kicking and screaming into the maelstrom of this annoying 10% tax addition which applied to this product but not that product, this service but not that one. Buy a steak at the supermarket and there’s no GST, but buy a steak at a restaurant and there’s GST. It’s all in the interpretation.

Deciphering the difference took a while, and even now if I’m helping newcomers learn the ropes in our local store and they ask if a product should be entered under the GST key on the till, or the GST free key, I ask “Can you eat it?” If the answer is no, that’s easy, it’s GST, though even then there are exceptions. If the answer is yes, I then ask, “Is it real food or processed food?” By and large, if it’s processed food, GST is the norm, but working out the definition of ‘processed’ brings up so many anomalies you have to check the supplier’s invoices constantly to get the right category before pricing the product.

Don’t know why I started on the GST issue, that’s not where I was really heading when I started. I’ve diligently filled out my tax returns since the 1968/69 financial year, my first year at Teacher’s College, and believe it or not I still have them all duly filed away in consecutive order in the filing cabinet. I did actually manage to pluck up the courage in 2012 to go paperless and do my first e-tax return, and did that each year until recently.

Have never had any qualms about paying my taxes, though I have long been a fan of the movie Stranger than Fiction, where an IRS officer has to investigate a bakery owner who was not fully forthcoming on her tax return evaluation. She explained, and I was in complete agreement, that she had no trouble paying the government for roads and schools and hospitals and all the good things they did, but she wasn’t prepared to pay for the things she disagreed with, nor their mishandling of her hard earned money, so she had come to the conclusion that withholding a certain percentage was the right and honourable thing to do.

One of the benefits of transitioning into aged pensioner status when you live a very uncomplicated life in terms of finances, is the fact I no longer need to submit a tax return. The pension is my only source of income, I have no shares either going through the roof or going down the drain, I have no rental properties to declare, no secret stash in a Swiss bank account, and no royalties coming in from the book I should have written by now. My needs are simple and the pension more than adequate to meet them. Having kept fastidious financial records for so long, it feels strange not accounting to the government for what I’ve received, and the legitimate deductions I could claim.

For many though it is a quagmire of frustration, a time for sorting through boxes and files of papers they vowed and declared last year to keep in order so they wouldn’t have to go through this annoying process yet again. They would probably agree with Mark Twain’s take on taxation. 

"What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin."

We do the adding and subtracting, finding what we can to minimise our losses, and emerge with an annual income which lets us know if we’re on the way up or the way down, whether or not we’re living within our means, if what’s going out is outstripping what’s coming in, and it can be a depressing exercise to put ourselves through. Being able to control our finances instead of feeling they are in control of us is a good place to be, but sadly not within everyone’s means. 

Come tax time, it’s all about numbers, but thankfully, our lives are made up of way more than a financial ledger. Despite what we have, don’t have or wish we had, those we care about don’t look at us in those terms. Author Mary T. Browne put it succinctly when she said “If you want an accounting of your worth, count your friends.”

It is our character that matters, our generosity, caring nature, listening ear, patience, perseverance and compassion, our contribution to the lives of those around us. These are the things we value in each other and aspire to emulate, and will be remembered long after our acquisitions fade into insignificance.

Revolving Doors

The Womens Weekly ran a one page article back in the 1960s which captured my imagination, throwing a long held belief about my future career into disarray. After fronting up to my very first day at school in fear and trepidation, by the end of the day I raced out to Mum saying I wanted to be a teacher. All credit to the teacher, for I have no recollection of her whatsoever or what she did to make that first day so memorable, but she must have picked up on my anxiety and included me in such a way that not only quelled my fears but brought something inside me to life. 

Fast forward to 1964, late in my second year of high school, when we had to make that all-important decision whether we would go professional or commercial in terms of our subject choices for the next year, determining the remainder of our school life and the future paths we would take. Back then, if you chose commercial, girls tended to head towards secretarial, retail, dressmaking, hairdressing and other seemingly traditional female roles within society, and boys took on woodwork and other stereotypical male pursuits and eventually headed to Tech School to learn trades.

I chose professional without a second thought, for teaching was still my goal, but that one magazine article when my road was already mapped out, upset the apple cart bigtime. Kudos to the editor for including it, for it probably coincided with the beginnings of women looking outside the box in terms of career choices. The Women’s Liberation Movement didn’t really come into its own in Australia until the late 1960s, but the issues and sentiments had been bubbling away for quite a while, and the article sparked something in me.

It started off as a simple article about career choices for women, such as teacher and nurse, librarian, hairdresser and secretary, with appropriate photos of women dressed for the job, smiling into the camera, looking confident and fulfilled. But then there were a few curly ones thrown in, none of which I can remember, except one. There on the page, resplendent in a trendy trench coat and sporting a hat shading her face, was a private eye. Private Eye, oh yes, now there was a job, truly unconventional but well worth considering.

Spellbound by that image and with a quickening heartbeat, it felt like I was reading something truly subversive. Was such a choice even possible? However attractive it might have been, my reaction probably had more to do with my desire for a degree of excitement my life was sadly lacking, rather than righting the wrongs of the world through subterfuge. Well, it was the 60’s after all, and the fact we were in the midst of the Cold War at the time meant much would have been going on undercover in every corner of the globe. To be honest though, the actualities of the job would have scared me out of my wits, but even before picking up the Weekly, the image of an immaculately dressed Diana Rigg as Mrs Peel in The Avengers TV series, had already etched itself on to some secret part of my psyche, appealing to my teenage fantasies of stepping my tomboyish ways well and truly up a notch. To me, she was the quintessential female private eye, and everything I was not. Trendy, brave, sassy. 

I’ve wondered at times whether I would have been a completely different person had I become a vet, or journalist, librarian, actress, singer, or even airline stewardess which I considered at one point, all interests on which I would have enjoyed building a career. But in the end, I followed through with the original plan. I chose teaching, which I loved, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes it felt like the safe option. There have been moments when I would have liked to approach a revolving door and come out the other side a completely new being, but no amount of looking back and wondering about what might have been can change how my life evolved. 

               Risk something or forever sit with your dreams    - Herb Brooks

I’ve always enjoyed the movie Sliding Doors, for it delves into the monumental changes that can happen in a person’s life as a result of split second decisions, how the paths our lives take can be very different depending on the choices we make, sometimes in circumstances beyond our control. It’s interesting to consider the possibility of a parallel existence moving alongside the one we inhabit, and whether, in hindsight, we’d prefer that other life, the one just out of reach. 

But we don’t get that choice. The whole process of decision making has a forward momentum. Choosing is a conscious act. One thing leads to another, one skill builds on another, expectations and responsibilities accumulate until what seemed like a good idea at the time can often find us feeling like we’re stuck on a treadmill, wondering how we managed to arrive at such an unfulfilling destination. That’s obviously not true for everyone, many are very happy with their career choices, but we also have to acknowledge that even not choosing can be a choice in itself, and carries its own consequences.

           The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new      -  Socrates

If we decide in the end we would prefer to live that other life, the one that could have been had we made choices based on what we really wanted to do, rather than on what we thought we should do, then maybe it’s simply time for a change. None of us want to look back on our lives with a sense of regret, but neither do we have to negate the years behind us, the time, effort and responsibilities we’ve carried for however many years. They are not wasted, not useless, for they are part of our life’s experience and who we have become, and it’s not impossible at any stage to become the better version of ourselves we would like to be. We can’t go back in time and start again, but we can make a new beginning and move forward.