Comfort with Money

During the month of June each year I suspect that Australia Post has a spike in revenue caused by the extra mailing resulting from charities across the country reminding existing patrons and cajoling new potential donors (from purchased mailing lists) that their charitable donations are tax deductible. It’s just like grabbing a bargain at the Click Frenzy or the Black Friday Sales. Charity is big business in Australia and we can be justly proud of the achievements of those or

One of the early sayings that I heard before I turned 18 was that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Taxes sustain our very existence and when I’m asked about saving taxes I generally respond by quoting the following sign which I once contemplated erecting above my office: “I want all my clients to have huge tax bills that they have no difficulty in paying”. On the same day some years ago I completed tax returns for two different clients. One was an airline pil

In my extreme youth in the 1950s I played “A” Grade Rugby, and in those days the snobs among us described one code as being the game for gentlemen played by thugs and the other being the game for thugs played by gentlemen. You can guess which one I played. The “gentlemen”, of course, were not paid. For the best part of a century sporting professionals – those who made a living from their sport – were not allowed to compete at the Olympic Games. When Trevor Allen, the Wallaby

When my father died in 1949 the salary he was receiving was £6 per week. You can’t get breakfast in a cheap café for the equivalent ($12) of that sum now. Every day I pass a sign offering daily car parking for $15. A long time ago I cancelled my monthly car parking arrangement when the cost was raised to $30. We’ve not had rampant inflation in Australia for many years now (I recall that in the early eighties when I worked as a paymaster my responsibilities included processing

If you believe that superannuation should be entirely voluntary and the government should not be telling us what we can and can’t do with our own money, it’s only a short step to claim that income tax, in fact all tax, falls into the same category. Within the superannuation system there is one huge anomaly, the principle of “double taxation”, which eventually led to one example of abandonment by the government, namely imputation credits. The other remains as a glaring example