I’m a lefty, and as such, I love taxes.

I have no objection whatsoever to the government demanding a portion of every citizen’s income. Yes, yes, you earned it, blah blah blah. You also drive on roads, use hospitals, have your safety protected by the police and have democratic elections; these things cost money and someone has to pay for it.

I finally got around to submitting my tax return yesterday, via e-tax. I’d been putting it off for months because of the final estimate of my refund, which was $166. Since I didn’t stand to receive a huge sum from Auntie Julia this year, I just kind of forgot about it, until seeing the e-tax icon in my start menu reminded me. So I checked everything, hit send, and now I’m waiting for a very small amount of money to trickle in. One time I got $2000 back because I’d been taxed for a full year’s income. Another time I had to pay $500 because I’d been told my HECS debt was clear and it wasn’t. Most of the other times I’ve got around $200 back. I don’t know why. I don’t ask those sort of questions, mostly because I wouldn’t understand the answers. I just press send. For all I know I’m invoking a little-known clause that allows the Finance Minister to come to my house and poke me with a stick for seven hours, or another clause that authorizes all payments to be sent to a stoner couple in Paraguay. I don’t know.

What I do know is that taxes are important, and that I’ve paid them. They get deducted from my salary every fortnight. I also know that the amount that gets deducted is the amount that’s supposed to be deducted. I know that because I check all the time, in the vain hope someone made a mistake and will helpfully forward me several thousand dollars and a black forest apology cake.

Every year, people tell me how I can not pay so much tax. I hear things like these:

• “You know if you buy a book that’s even remotely related to your job, you can claim it back?”
• “Since you catch the bus to work you should keep every ticket and MyWay charge receipt and claim it back.”
• “I go on holiday every week to Ibiza but because I can claim it’s good for my work-life balance I can legally claim tens of thousands of dollars in expenses.”
• “I gave five thousand dollars to the International Institute of Starving Orphans With Cancer, and I can claim it as a tax deduction and use the money to purchase my very own terminally-ill child to use as a domestic servant and pet, thus claiming those expenses as well.”

These all grind my gears, particularly that last one. If you give money to charity, it’s incredibly self-serving to claim it back on your tax. The entire purpose of charity is giving money which you don’t need to someone who needs it more. If I wanted the money for myself, I wouldn’t give it away, would I? The same goes for union fees. I pay the union to look out for me, at which it is reasonably competent 60% of the time. Why the hell should I get the fees back again? When I pay a gardener to weed my lawn, I don’t get the money back. I’m paying for a service. The same is true of my private medical insurance. It would be simpler and easier for the government just to pay millions of dollars to charity every year.

 I know the argument. “If you couldn’t claim X on tax, people wouldn’t do it.” Firstly, I don’t know if that’s true. I very seriously doubt most people think about their taxes first when making a donation to UNICEF. They think about it at tax time. Secondly, tough. We live in capitalism, as the anti-tax nutters constantly remind us. You pay for shit under capitalism. So stop being so greedy and pay for shit.

I don’t claim very much back on tax at all. Mostly this is because there’s nothing I can claim. Most people don’t have jobs with huge expenses. The laws that allow you to claim refunds for things are mostly there to benefit the wealthy, who can use them to get out of paying the reasonable sums the government demands. A billionaire can give 60% of his income to the taxman and still be able to afford that solid gold toilet he’s had his eye on. Of course the rich pay more. They have more.

You should only be allowed to claim things that you have personally purchased because you have been required to for your work or, sometimes, family. If you make a lot of trips but work won’t pay for your petrol, claiming it back is reasonable. If you are required to wear a uniform and work won’t provide one, or won’t pay cleaning costs, that too is reasonable. But if you are a lawyer and you fork out hundreds on John Grisham novels, that’s your expense. You don’t need them. You just want them. The same goes for mobile phones and iPads.

You shouldn’t be able to claim union fees, insurance or anything else that is providing a service. You shouldn’t be able to claim gifts for anybody. Closing these loopholes would bring in huge amounts of revenue. It wouldn’t be raising taxes. It would be making sure the amount you are supposed to pay is the amount you paid. Most of us wouldn’t even notice. The only people who would are the wealth who hire flashy accountants to make sure they pay as little tax as possible. And as I’m sure you can guess, I couldn’t give a toss whether the wealthy are happy.

You need roads. You need schools. You need hospitals. You need police, firemen, soldiers, museums and parks. Someone has to pay for them.

Pay your damn taxes.

Failing that, move to Monaco. I hear the views are breathtaking.