The Taxman Cometh Monthly

 The Taxman Cometh Monthly

First Published in Column 8 on the 3rd July 1997

It is in the nature of things that columnists must write one out of four columns for the taxman. Every four weeks this leaves the columnist with the agonizing choice: which column belongs to the taxman, the good, the bad, or the ugly? (I mean the good, bad and ugly columns, of course.)

 It also means that the columnist has an obvious problem: if he writes a column intended merely to sate the surfeited coffers of the Infernal Revenue, will the readers be able to detect such writing? Will the readers come to each column wondering: Is This The One? Worse, will the taxman begin to insist that the columns written for him be better than usual, (if such were possible), and that he must have a dedication at the top?

 I suppose one way round this problem would be to cast a web of mystery around the persona of the columnist. Columns have often been used as places where fairly insignificant individuals fulfil their literary aspirations. Dear Abby is one example, or The Weasel - sorry, I mean the Ferret.*

 Does/did Dear Abby exist? More importantly, for our purpose, does Mike Crowl exist? Or is he merely a figment of the editor's imagination?

 Is Column 8 thrown together at the last minute by the reporter with the least to do that week? Is the photograph at the top merely a morphing of the faces of several different reporters?

 Will you ever see Crowl in public, or will you only see a character portrayed by an otherwise out-of-work actor? Would he always be played by the same actor in fact? (The beard is a clue: it would help to disguise the possibility that several different people could portray Crowl.)

 Is Crowl merely an urban myth, like the phantom hitchhiker - a character always spoken about at second hand who turns up to haunt gullible people for the next twenty or thirty years? And if Crowl is only a myth, why should one fourth of his earnings be deducted for the taxman?

 If I harp on this point, it is because I suspect that Crowl is not alone in his mythical status. I have long wondered, in fact, if there is even such a person as Miles Singe.** In my opinion, Miles Singe is actually the combined pseudonym of several anonymous writers.

There are various clues to the writers' personalities in the title the column, "Singe Marks."

Marks is plainly a pun on Marx, which means that one writer has communist leanings, though we must say that he keeps these fairly close to himself. This may also indicate his age - I guess he's a victim of the 1950s reds-under-the-bed neurosis.

 "Singe" is even more revealing. "Sin," the first part of this cryptic word, indicates a writer from a Catholic background, and may even tell us that he is a relative of the famous Phillipino Cardinal, (who invited someone into his home by saying, "Welcome to the house of Sin.")

 "Sing" shows that somewhere in one writer's past he (or she) has had a musical career, while "Inge" gives us a clue as to the extent of another's writing ambitions - compare Dean Inge.

The "ng" may indicate ing-digenous origins, although perhaps this is a little far-fetched.

 With both these personalities thus being of mythical status, they cannot possibly be subject to tax. Would we attempt to tax Zeus or Pan?

 Let me suggest to all readers who have friends in the tax dept, (and I don't mean if you owe them money), that you encourage such friends to read this column and consider whether the Infernal Revenue should really be subjecting Crowl or Singe to tax.

 I'll be interested to hear their thoughts on the matter.

The Tax Collector/Paying the Tax - Pieter Breugel the Younger

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*The Ferret was the pseudonym of a columnist in the Auckland magazine, Metro

** Miles Singe was a long-standing columnist in both the Star Midweek and the Star Weekender. He was there before I began writing my column, and continues to this day (3rd July, 97!)  An old soldier, he often wrote about the military; enjoyed pretending to be an old soak as well as someone who maltreated his wife and (grown-up) children.  He was likely to be neither.