Pay tax before perks

A smoke signaller wrote yesterday: “While listening to parliament today I was annoyed to hear Wilkie Rasmussen pleading for businesses that have tax arrears, and he’s asking for leniency on them. In my business we make sacrifices and the owners go without personal pay sometimes in order to pay our monthly tax bill. This includes PAYE collected from staff pay packets, VAT collected on behalf of government, and company tax which we pay ahead of overseas trips and luxury things like flash six cylinder 4x4s. What’s up with these bludgers and free-loaders like a certain resort owner and a certain lawyer who live the high life and who run up huge tax arrears, and then self-righteously tell us how the country should be run, or even attack their competitors for so-called restrictive trade practices.”

A smoke signaller wrote yesterday: “While listening to parliament today I was annoyed to hear Wilkie Rasmussen pleading for businesses that have tax arrears, and he’s asking for leniency on them. In my business we make sacrifices and the owners go without personal pay sometimes in order to pay our monthly tax bill. This includes PAYE collected from staff pay packets, VAT collected on behalf of government, and company tax which we pay ahead of overseas trips and luxury things like flash six cylinder 4x4s. What’s up with these bludgers and free-loaders like a certain resort owner and a certain lawyer who live the high life and who run up huge tax arrears, and then self-righteously tell us how the country should be run, or even attack their competitors for so-called restrictive trade practices.”