Our Australian taxation system is an impressive clockwork-like machine with its origins in pre-Victorian times; designed on pre-Victorian principles and with pre-Victorian efficiency. Its workings today, even though falling far short of what is needed in this electronic age, are kept in working order at great expense to the Australian Community.

The author for 34 years was just a worker in Maintenance tasked with keeping everything running as previously. All his pleadings for updating and improving existing plant and functions were met with a glazed silence and just ignored. Instead he made notes of his observations and described in detail the issues causing concern and how a particular function might be made to work more efficiently or, in many cases, retired from service.

This book might easily be taken for a report by a Royal Commission set up for the purpose of looking into and reporting on its inequity, its inefficiency and its complexity. But such Royal Commissions and enquires were held and even examined the issues just mentioned but were unable to formulate the findings and recommendations our author makes in this book.