ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Betoota Heights smash repairer is running a bit slow this morning after arriving into town late last night on the last Rex flight in from the coast.
For the past ten days, local man Sam Touma has been in Las Vegas with a few mates. About a dozen of them, all local businessmen, made the trip over for the opening NRL games of the season at Allegiant Stadium. Though their Broncos didn’t get up against the Roosters, Sam told The Advocate he had one hell of a time.
“Man,” he said.
“It was the best time ever. I’m telling you, brother, you need to go. It’s hectic. A few of the boys and that went over and we partied for days man. Shit that the fucken Roosters won but I’m telling you, man, you gotta go over next year for it,”
“I’m going to claim it as a work trip. You’re a fucken journalist, man, you’d be able to claim it easy. Just go over there and cover it for The Advocate. You don’t have to do shit, either, bro. What does some nerd at the ATO (Australian Tax Office) know about going to Vegas? Nothing, bro. I visited a few [smash repair] shops when I was over there, saw some of their new tech and shit. So I can claim it but I hope they don’t look too closely, ey?”
“Man, you need to go.”
The Advocate’s accountant and chief tax compliancy officer noted what Mr Touma has told our reporter and said he can only try.
Mark Cunningham from the finance department here at our Daroo Street newsroom laughed and said the nation was built on grey-area tax fraud and he expects the ATO to “get a few laughs” out of what people will claim from Las Vegas.
“You know, they’re not idiots,” he said.
“The smart ones, the builders, they actually organised a full-blown work conference in Las Vegas and invited a bunch of delegates from the US to come to it. That’s genius. It’s all above board and I guarantee not one bit of constructive, mind the pun, not one bit of constructive dialogue got spoken at that conference. It would’ve been piss and fried food and a bit of football. All a big write off,”
“A smash repairer from Betoota Heights? Good luck and I hope whoever audits you has mercy.”
More to come.
