RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: Thieving Taxman Living Off Immoral Earnings  Tue Jun 30, 2009 3:38 am | |
| GERMAN tax officials recently proved nothing is sacred when it comes to taxation, laying claim to half the $17,900 earned by a teenage student who auctioned off her virginity last month to an Italian businessman who paid cash for a weekend of sex.
It was not even a moral standpoint, said an official in Berlin, "but a fiscal one", as they regarded the 18-year-old's act as prostitution - which is not illegal in Germany but is heavily taxed.
Although the Romanian-born student's visa allowed her to work in Germany for 90 days - even as a prostitute - one tax expert admitted that "she would have been better keeping quiet about this strange transaction".
She may also be liable for a GST bill, which, in Germany works out to 19 per cent, resulting in her making only about $6100 from the deal.
On the other hand, Potjaman Damapong, former wife of the former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was found guilty of evading millions of dollars in taxes and sentenced to three years' jail last August, with the landmark ruling striking a blow against the man ousted in a 2006 coup and who has long denied any wrongdoing by his family in the tax case.
Ms Potjaman was far from the only female, politician or celebrity to have tax problems over the past financial year. The Alaskan governor and former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin owed income taxes on nearly $US17,000 ($21,000) paid to her as travel reimbursements when she spent nights in her own home, according to a state legal opinion.
Roberta Williams, the former wife of the convicted murderer Carl Williams, scored a small victory on the other side of the taxation ledger when charges against her of having failed to lodge a tax return were dropped last year.
On a similar charge, of having failed to comply with tax law, the former shadow treasurer John Hewson, the architect of the most significant tax reform of the past few decades, pleaded guilty last December to having failed to lodge a tax return, despite it being one for which he was ultimately owed money. However, more happily for him, the charge was dismissed without conviction.
But if it is any consolation for Mr Hewson (and the rest of us who struggle each year to get our own tax returns in on time), according to a newspaper report in February, almost a third of Australian politicians failed to submit their tax returns on time, 22.3 per cent lodging their 2006-07 returns late and 7.8 per cent still having not done so by last December.
The tax details of the US President, Barack Obama, were made public on time on US tax filing day in April - and made for happier reading than many, as his family's income soared sharply, from an average $US250,000 in 2000-04 to a total of $US2.6 million, thanks to his best-selling memoirs raking in more than $US2.4 million. The remainder came from his income as a senator and the work of his wife, Michelle, at the University of Chicago Hospitals.
Royalties from his books are sure to bring in much more than his annual salary of just $US400,000 as President, but others hoping to have been part of his administration were not so fortunate with tax.
Tom Daschle, his nominee to lead health-care reform, and Nancy Killefer, his choice for budget watchdog, both quit after being engulfed in controversy over unpaid taxes, while the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, was only sworn in after surviving a problem with his unpaid taxes.
Closer to home, the Tax Office was nevertheless named among the nation's most desirable employers in a survey of 500 undergraduates late last year. Qantas topped the list, but the Tax Office was the fourth-most popular target for job-seeking university students, beating both Coles (fifth) and Commonwealth Bank (eighth).
These presumably "contented" employees-to-be could then be put to work processing returns for Australian taxpayers, but perhaps with more sensible outcomes than in the US, where a Detroit lawyer was a little confused by two letters he received from the Internal Revenue Service. The first said he owed it 5c, and the next one showed the Government owing him 4c. A spokesman for the tax agency said it did not comment on individual cases.
Not even death can keep the tax man from your estate. Possessions belonging to the musician James Brown, ranging from his signature capes to a medical bracelet, were auctioned in July in part to pay taxes.
Finally, a 46-year-old woman in a British court caused a sort of uproar when she literally gave the court not one finger, but two, pulling two real fingers from her handbag.
They belonged to one of her children, she said, and had fallen off as a result of a voodoo curse that forced her into crime. One juror bursted into tears, and the judge briefly adjourned the case, which ended with the woman being jailed for tax fraud.
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