High Tax Blues

They found me! After more than a decade they finally smoked me out of hiding. They who? The Income Tax guys, who else. Before you get the wrong idea, I'm not a tax-evader. I committed a far more serious crime: I didn't file in my returns!

After moving back to the kampung, I stopped getting those familiar brown envelopes. They didn't know if I even existed. I didn't bother to go and ask for one because I wasn't earning anything anyway. I thought I was saving the trees from extinction as I was not going to be taxed anyway.

Then I made the grave mistake of applying for the new hi-tech MyKad ID. I applied twice actually because I didn't like the way my mugshot looked in the first one. Such vanity cost me dearly and they knew where I live now. Who would know that the government agencies are hot-wired to each other? Well, to be fair, I do know that they were quite savvy in IT the way they went about singing Cintailah IT and passed gossips about Siti Nurhaliza. But I didn't know they are THAT connected.

So they sent me reminders after reminders but I ignored them. Even when they threatened legal action, I still ignored them because they got my last name wrong. In the kampungs, you really need to know the names of the guy, his father, his mother and his grandfather and all their respective aliases before you can nab him.

But they got my name right this time and they got my MyKad number right too. And they are dead serious about hauling me to court. Come next month, this blogger will be put at the mercy of the learned judge. I shudder to think what they will do to me.

The worst they can do is perhaps take away my new MyKad, my passport and put me in jail as I'm not going to pay any fine. Well, it's about time they feed me for a change. Perhaps it could be fun too and I can still blog about trading for things with matchsticks or keeping a full beard like Saddam. Actually I'm beginning to look like Salman Rushdie; that's why I have traded the beard for a goatee now.

Blog? OMG they're going to take away my blog too, aren't they? Somebody had better grab some candles and keep a night vigil for me until next month. And bail me out as I can't live without blogging. Really, Hazel; I know it is updated sporadically, okay?

Now, I'm afraid. Really afraid.