[dotti34]

On a completely different note – but still about money and the various agencies, some time ago I received a letter from the Income Tax mob here to say that based on information from the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre they understood that I had made funds transfers to or from another country. They wanted to know about my undisclosed offshore income – although if I had paid tax on this I could disregard the letter.

Well, after I had picked myself up from the floor where I had fallen due to unrestrained hilarity, my first impulse was to tear the letter up. However, on second thoughts I decided to give it the reply it deserved.

If they had looked at my bank account and had seen what my balance was at that time (unfortunately it’s not much better now!) I doubt they would have wasted the postage on sending me the letter. I replied to them in this vein, and eventually got an apology for any blah! blah! blah!

All I can think of as to why anyone in their right mind would think I had offshore investments was that my daughter was living in the Caribbean at the time and the antiquated island she was on didn’t have a great banking system so she would send me money via Western Union to deposit in her account here. Some agency must have reported the transactions – and (as I was the one doing the collecting of the money from the post office AND the money was coming from the Caribbean) the taxman had jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Funny that a little old pensioner (boo! hoo!) should be thought to be guilty of defrauding the Tax Office in this way and investigated when so many ‘big people’ get away with much, much, more.

Now back to the bank thread…..