Don’t do that!

KEY POINTS

• Fancy something different.
• Getting together for breakfast.
• Going bust.
• A new collection of novelties.
• A super-sized delivery.

She certainly had the sort of figure I appreciate, and I could tell by the way she replied to my questions that she knew how to make a guy like me happy.

“What do you really want: a big double dip or some double-digit inflation?” I asked.

“Ooh, rampant inflation every time!” she gasped.

“Well you’d better prepare yourself for some hard bargaining” I murmured as...

BRRRING … BRRRING … the harsh jangling of the phone ruined the moment.

Reluctantly, I put down my copy of Fifty Grades of Pay and lifted the receiver.

“Ho, ho, ho! How would you like a new car for Christmas?”

“Oh yes please!” I blurted out, before I realised that I wasn’t talking to my favourite client at all, but to the taXwords purse-strings department (motto “very little help”) who thanked me for agreeing to support the firm’s push towards meeting its green commitments and told me the new car would be delivered a week later.

“What is it?” I asked, but the line had already gone dead.

No sleep ‘til Lapland

Seven days later I dutifully handed over the keys of my old car with a heavy heart and a growing sense of anticipation, tempered only by tiredness because I hadn’t slept a wink all night.

I wasn’t excited; when they rang me I’d only just filled the tank and so had to get my money’s worth. It’s the sort of challenge that makes driving all the way to Lapland seem attractive.

Okay, I needed to fill up a few more times en route but I judged things beautifully. My joy was compounded when the smirking functionary who took away the old car roared out of the car park and ran out of fuel before the first traffic light.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have laughed so loud because I’m still waiting for the replacement, but it has been described to me as “very exciting”.

Exciting? I was soon to realise that that description had been coined by a management accounting nerd who gets out too little and operates to a different meaning of “exciting” from normal human beings.

He once took up two hours 18 minutes of my time explaining why it’s cheaper to spend five pence less by paying mileage and have me arrive knackered than to pay for public transport on which I can do some work and arrive fresher.

Anyway, I can now feast my eyes on the brochures for my new machine. As ever, the specification choices are bewildering. The colour choice is wide: fifty shades of grey and it comes with a special option pack developed with the accountancy profession in mind.

The Audi T features “Vision Focus Technology”, so you get a huge rear-view mirror and rear windscreen for perfect hindsight, no side windows (lateral vision is too distracting), and a tiny front screen to restrict the driver’s attention to only what lies immediately ahead.

Being an Audi T it already seems pre-programmed to follow what’s just in front uncomfortably closely.

Then there’s “Three-Letter Abbreviation (and sometimes even a genuine acronym) Integrated Terminology” or TLA-IT or TIT. Somehow I don’t think I’m going to enjoy it as much as my old Persche.

Everyone agreed that that was a very superior motor: sleek, powerful, smooth; the word most commonly used was “swish”; so with the swish agreement playing on my mind I set off for the mystic east, or at least the far side of Yorkshire where I could catch the ferry.

Eventually. But not before I was stuck where a group of navvies was trying but failing to replace the cobbles on the M62.

Unfortunately, their new machines kept breaking down: truly the road to Hull was paved with dud inventions.

Before I could board the ferry the car was inspected by a customs officer who looked just like Humpty Dumpty; a typical egg-size man.

Bankers away

So I trundled on to the ferry and made my way to the lounge for the long North Sea crossing. Being purely a tax specialist, I felt at home on these unchartered waters so I relaxed and opened my book again.

“Is that a PSA in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?” The book was about as literate as an HMRC press release, but the only other one I’d brought was Pippa Middleton’s book of tax tips: “If you are going to pay some tax make sure you’ve got plenty of money.”

Back to Fifty Grades. “Now I’m going to really turn the tax tables on you…” “Hello there! There’s nothing like a good book”, I say.

For once, I was pleased to see my old friend the ORC (Officer of Revenue and Customs). “No,” I replied. “And this is nothing like a good book. What are you reading these days?”

“A recently discovered and little-known EM Forster: Rent-a-Room with a View to Profit. It’s got some good tips for a taxman, like ‘HMRC only collect’”. Then I’m going to start on A Passage to Indian Domicile.”

“Sounds interesting. Does that mean you’re involved in HMRC Connect?”

“Yes, but right now I’m following up on the Swiss agreement. We’ve got inside information that one of your clients may have connections with the Gnomes of Zurich.”

I thought I’d better find out as much as I could about this, so I put on my best friendly face and offered to buy him a drink.

“Don’t mind if you do. I’ve always fancied trying something a bit different. What do you recommend?”

There were some things the well-behaved taxman usually has to avoid, but I sensed a weakness.

How about a double Irish?”

“Ooh, I’m not sure we’re supposed to touch those.” He frowned.

“Well you needn’t be unsure now we’re offshore,” I reassured him and went to the bar.

The evening went well and we had quite a good chat in which he explained that he’d been looking at Coffee Ishmael where he’d been suspicious about some of their intra-group decoctions and deductions at first, but they had shown how important branding was and how expensive it could be to produce the little stickers that went on the cups, beakers, cakes and even the staff.

“I now consider myself to be a bit of a shpessalist on transhfer pricing!” he proudly burbled.

After that and the number of drinks he’d had I began to wonder if there was anything he wouldn’t swallow but when we went to see about getting something to eat there was a problem.

We took too long deciding what to have and missed the time limit, so the waiter informed us that he was going to have to withhold snacks, not even a Dutch sandwich.

Hit me with your swizzle stick

My Revenue friend was clearly in a bit of a bad way, with a bad case of HMRC’s equivalent of hiccups, “HICBC!” he went, “HICBC! That Rudolph doesn’t know what’s coming to him!”

Eventually I poured him into his bunk and was about to tottel unsteadily to my cabin when all hell broke loose: there was another vessel nearby that was struggling to cope with the rough waters. I ran to the rail and watched as the attempted rescue got under way.

“What ship is that?” I shouted across.

“SS Osborne,” came the reply.

“Where are you headed?”

“Er, not exactly sure.”

“What was your last heading?”

“Alistair Darling. Or was it Grace? Something to do with running on the rocks, anyway.”

“You appear to be listing badly to starboard. What’s your cargo?”

“We’re taking organic thyme, but it’s heeling the ship and we’re in a bit of a state.”

“What are you doing to help yourselves?”

“Help? We don’t need help! Steady as she goes!”

Fortunately our captain was a sage veteran who knew his onions and told them to sort out any false herbs and cram the cargo into an orderly arrangement in the deepest, darkest place at the bottom of the hold or, to use his precise words: “You can stuff your real thyme in formation where the sun never shines.”

He spoke with the voice of competent authority, so the crew followed his orders. For a moment the ship looked set to roll over, but to our relief she righted herself and set off again on her uncertain course.

The next morning the taxman joined me at breakfast and we got to discussing the latest developments on TV.

I’m a bit old fashioned so I love reruns of the classics – The Loan Ranger(s), The Transfer Price is Right – while he displayed an unhealthy liking for reality shows like the latest one about summer in the UK, Britain’s Got Torrents, though he did add that he’d also recently rediscovered Swiss Family Robinson and was really starting to enjoy it the second time around.

Then he got out his book, the best seller around HMRC’s call centres, Fifty Days of Delay, in which the heroine finds innovative and very exciting (or so he said) ways of being tied up whenever required.

Don’t fear the creeper

Eventually, we docked and set off on our separate ways, I up the road north and he to the bus station. I turned on the stereo and plugged in my iPod.

I’d rediscovered an old favourite, a Joyce Grenfell classic that reminded me of childhood but also somehow seems relevant now.

Finally, I rolled up at the North Pole, having set the fastest time ever to cross that stretch of tundra. In fact I set a new Lapp record.

As ever, Santa was looking harassed when I arrived. At first sight, I thought he was having yet another dispute with the elves but a closer look showed that the little people he was arguing with weren’t dressed in festive green; their uniforms consisted of the most depressing grey and they spoke the most tedious impenetrable slang I’d ever heard.

“A, no AA. Not AAA, no way!”

I wondered at first whether they were lawyers, after Santa for 50 years of not including batteries, but then I also picked on just how rude they were being and I realised: Santa was being downgraded by the FSA (Fairyland Sleigh Authority) who had sent in Stunted and Boors to do a hatchet job, sorry, report.

“It’s just wrong. There are only certain colour schemes you’re permitted for these vehicles,” their leader said, “and it’s not on our permitted list.”

He brandished a laminated leaflet with 25 colours on each side demonstrating what was permitted. Fifty shades of sleigh: this was getting ridiculous.

Something was wrong, so I decided to test them. I spoke out as loud and and clearly as I could, “I … don’t … believe … in … fair...” and they were gone in a flash. I’d never believed a fairy died when you completed that sentence, but they were not prepared to take a chance.

“Hi, Santa. How are you?”

“I’m all right, but Rudolph’s in a right lather, keeps going on about being marked by HMRC so all they’re getting this year is shower SOAP. I hope he gets sorted soon because, without him, I’ll be two reindeer down.”

I commiserated with him about Comet being liquidated. It had hit the old man hard and he’d got way behind with his buying, so we’d had to fabricate a story about his supplier going bust to manage expectations.

Still, he was getting things back under control gradually and he’d benefited from a flood of reservations for Buzzoni Lightyear models.

Bern, baby, Bern

At that point, the deer himself appeared looking relieved, but with the taxman still in tow. “You’ve won that battle but only on a technicality and heaven help you if you come before Justice Ertz again!” Rudolph laughed when he caught my look of bewilderment.

“We got an adjournment when I asked if the judge was allowed to make a valid ruling when he wasn’t wearing his proper ermine robes. It confused him so much that, when my lawyer suggested that ‘justice de-furred is justice denied’, he got the wind up and declared a mistral.”

The ORC was trying not to laugh too, then came over all serious and said that Rudolph was on their target list of high-profile tax avoiders.

“You’re all the same you celebrity animals, especially deer. It’s always deer; first there was Bambi, then Inspector Moose, Britt Elkland, that American gang and now you. You star-bucks annoy us!”

“What American gang?” I asked.

“Smugglers in the prohibition era. Surely you’ve heard of the great carry-booze migrations.”

“But what makes you think he’s dodging tax?”

“We have our sources you know. There are quite a few witnesses who swear that they saw him making a deposit there last Christmas Eve.”

“That was a misunderstanding following a dodgy takeaway. And anyway, we cleared it up as best we could and he’s regularised now.”

“If only it was that simple. But we’ve come up with a much smarter idea…”

“I’m getting one of them myself soon,” Rudolph butted in. Everyone gawped at him. “It’s the latest dating gadget for lovelorn Lapland luge-luggers, the i-Deer.”

Deer Prudence

The taxman shook his head. “We had our top men working on it and this idea came from the very top, from George himself and it’s a beauty. Look in the Daft Finance Bill!

Tell me, Mr Reindeer, how many are there in your herd right now?” I have to say I’d never seen an ashen-faced reindeer before.

“Er, um, ah, ab-b-bout two thousand does and some fawns.”

“We make it two thousand five hundred does. How many fawns are there?”

“Oh, er, let’s see, two each, so that’s...”

“Five thousand little reindeer. And all their mothers live
with you?”

“Yes.”

“And they are all claiming wild benefit?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“We do. From next January you’re going to have to start saving to pay your HICBC, mate!”

‘What’s that?” asked a bewildered Santa.

“Highly Improbable Caribou Babies Charge,” I told him. “This could run into millions.”

“Ooh, that’s a bit dear! But they’re not even all mine!”

“Doesn’t matter, they live with you and your hinds, who all claim wild benefit. Never mind, you’ve got a couple of weeks to get them all to put their disclaimers in to Tyne and Deer.”

Rudolph slunk off to plan his next move and Santa beckoned me in to see his new collection of novelties.

“I’ve even got a new Cave, so lots of lovely books. I delivered one early to that ship you saw zig-zagging all over the place earlier. They looked in need of a tacks-righter, so Rebecca dashed off some guidance for them. There may be a serial to be made. I think I’ll call it Special Cave. I’ve even got the catchphrase, ‘Ho ho holdover!’ Are you hungry?”

“Starving!”

I only have eyes for stew

Having expressed a desire for something tasty, Santa told me to head to the canteen for some non-taxed stew. “Help yourself from our VAT-free vat,” he said.

“Haven’t you heard of the charge on hot food?” I asked.

“Doesn’t apply, haven’t you heard of the scouse exemption?”

We followed the stew with delicious honey on toast, sourced from Santa’s own pollen estate where they employ only class 1 bees.

“Organic, too, tended by our own little helpers, all of whom are trained eco-gnomists.”

I stopped him before he droned on. “That’s a lot of workers to transport around. Have you thought of using an employee buzz service? Anyway, just how pure is it and can you vouch for its source? You wouldn’t want to be accused of honey-laundering.”

He took me to the packing shed and shop where there was none of the usual canned music, just peace and calm, explaining that they had found that muzak offended the ears of customers and put them off so, on commercial and organic grounds, the anti-buy otics had been dropped.

Next door was his fresh fish counter where I asked him if he was still planning to incorporate. “No, not with this load of pollocks to shift: I’m staying a sole trader. Now come and look at my accountants’ toys.”

Share heart attack

Santa’s toys turned out to be a range of Trade Wars-themed figurines: CPD-3PO and his companion, seen at all the conventions, Art.2 Deed2, a handy cooking app for your phone, the e-Wok and, piece de resistance, the ultimate villain himself “Vader! Not Darth: he always had his following but to a select clientele there’s a demand for something many times more diabolical; this is his electronically enhanced cyborg brother, E-Vader. Why be non-resident when you can be out of this world?”

“We’ve got him into films, too. Have you seen Totel Recall yet? No? How about NonUK of the North?”

I had to confess that I had missed all those masterpieces, but I had a toy rocket when I was a kid, a Fireball XBRL-5, and I’m up to date with science-based entertainment. I’m working my way through a box-set of iCloudius.

“Now, what do you think of this lot?” asked Santa, pointing at what could only be described as a useless heap of agricultural junk. Each piece was loosely wrapped in a bit of old flannel and bore a price tag that read “Guaranteed value: £2,000 or your money back” and in very small print “Unless you’ve signed away your rights. Which you just have.”

“Ahh,” I said, “these must be those shares I’ve been hearing about. They look a bit dull don’t they? OW!” I’d cut my finger on one of the catches. “You should have warned me they were sharp! Practice needed. Are you sure they won’t be abused?”

“Not at all. I got them from a reputable trader who’d engaged the well-known recycling specialists GAAR & Son who’ll be adding anti-abuse ferrules.”

Nanny major dude will tell you off

At that point, Rudolph came bounding back in positively beaming and gave me a huge hug. “You’re a genius, even though you didn’t know it!”

I quite liked his fawning tone and decided to bask in this unexpected, and probably undeserved, glow and keep quiet.”

The taxman filled me in, informationally, though it’s clear the physical option was tempting him.

“You and your cunning plans, establishing a second home for all his hinds, so none of them can be touched for HICBC! And it’s wrapped up in a bare trust for his children”

“Aren’t they totally transparent?” I asked him.

“Yes; but you should see the size of the bear!”

Mind you, I’m actually rather grateful to you as he was wagging his head very threateningly and prepared to make his points very forcefully. For once, I was glad to indulge in a bit of antler-avoidance.

“Anyway, I must be going as we’re still having CFC problems. We’re just dogged by ill-fortune when it comes to football.”

And off he went, angrily chomping on a Murray Mint.

“I do wish he wouldn’t mention dogs, after Rudolph’s bad experience last year. He was attacked and the hospital bill was horrendous. I complained, but all they could say was ‘Ooh, that’s a bit deer!’ Heartless, they are, and me nearly hart-less!”

It was getting near time for me to go but there were still things to be shown, a special delivery of super-size clerical vestments, the Canonical XXL payload and a cat that glowed when it was happy, the Purr-o-Light. I climbed into the trusty Persche and headed for home.

The next day I woke up to find my request had been answered. Hanging on my handsome old Ingles-Snook fireplace was a box of Marrens Glaces.

This was a day to ignore the economic Schlumpf, unwrap a Swiss roll and a Mazars Bar and open a nice bottle of Cape Brandy while listening to Joyce perform my favourite piece of comic nostalgia.

The record was old and crackly, but the unmistakeably nannyish voice cut through:

“George! Don’t do that.”

Issue: 4384 / Categories: Comment & Analysis