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HUMOUR

BEFORE YOU LEAVE

FOR PERTH

BY JAMES CLARKE

I am in possession of a delightful letter ostensibly written by an official in the British
Receiver of Revenue's office. Being a loyal, tax-paying supporter of our own Receiver of
Revenue in Johannesburg, I have adapted the letter for use in South Africa should our
Receiver, one day, need it to send to an abusive, whinging taxpayer.

Dear the Hon/Professor/Dr/Rev/Mr/Mrs/Ms du Toit,
I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt (and perhaps rather over-hasty) reply to our
latest communication regarding your tax assessment. I will also try to answer some of the points you raise.

I will address them, as ever, in order.
Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last communication as a ‘begging letter’ . It might perhaps more
properly be referred to as a ‘tax demand’ . This is how we at the South African Revenue Service offices have always, for
reasons of accuracy, traditionally referred to such documents.
Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the ‘endless stream of crapulent whining and soliciting vomited daily
into your email Inbox’ has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you
refer I would cautiously suggest that their being from ‘councils run by halfwits, pirate banking houses and Mickey
Mouse organisations such as Eskom’ might indicate that your decision to ‘file the printouts next to the toilet in case
of emergencies’ is at best a little ill-advised. In common with my own organization, it is unlikely that the senders of
these letters do see you as ‘something that needs watering once a day’ or, come to that, as ‘some wretched charity’ .
More likely they see you as a citizen of South Africa with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of our nation as

a whole.
Which brings me to my next point. Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you
pay "go to shore up the light-fingered, blighted, toppling folly that is South Africa's Public Service", a moment's
rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you, personally,
to "finance the whole leading party-run government with its 26 000 BMWs, its family shopping forays in Dubai and
Singapore, and its annual intake of 370 000 cases of Johnny Walker Black Label".
The estimates you provide for the Department of Finance's disbursement of the funds levied by taxation, whilst
colourful, are, in fairness, a little off the mark.
Less than you seem to imagine is spent on ‘junkets for the brain dead’ , ‘Youth League binge parties’ and ‘cabinet
ministers' overseas holidays’ - and far more than you have accounted for is allocated to, for example, ‘that crumbling

parody of an education system’ .
A couple of technical points arising from direct queries:
1. The reason we don't simply write ‘Sucker’ in the subject line has to do with the inadequacies of the email system.
2. You can rest assured that ‘mercilessly extracting the last microgram of flesh from those with nothing else to give’
has never been considered as a practice because the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially
unviable.

I trust this has helped
In the meantime, whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other, I ought to point
out that even if you did choose to "give up the whole corrupt lunatic asylum and go and live in Perth or Sydney with
the rest of South Africa's professional class" you would still owe us the money.

Please send it to us within 7 days.

Yours sincerely,
Gapa ka Moka
Customer Care
Receiver of Revenue

DPL