Categories
Glass House

Charities fear losing tax-free status (The Glass House 6/7/05)

The SMH has this article over here my friends.

The Tax Office is cracking down on non-profit organisations, with a new list of criteria that charities have to satisfy to qualify for tax exemption. An organisation is not deemed charitable if its purpose is “propagating or promoting a particular point of view”, a fairly broad definition which would seem to exclude every organisation. So now the only tax exempt organisations are media empires, casinos and accountants.

…So now the only tax exempt organisation is the Tax Office.

Organisations like Greenpeace are afraid that their tax-exempt status is at risk. This’ll mean a reduction of 30% to their mung bean allowance, and tie-dying is being cut back by half. They’ll have to send in a third of their solar Ergs too.

Now only people without any actual points of view can be registered as a charity – so that pretty much leaves Big Brother contestants.

So when you’re wanting to make a charitable donation, support “Vague People for Nothing-in-particular”, and help them make no difference to anyone.

So when you’re wanting to make a charitable donation, support “Vague People for Nothing-in-particular”, and help them a big difference… to something-or-other.

I’m starting a new charity up, “Miscellaneous Anonymous”. I can’t tell you what we do. But it’s definitely for the greater good.

The latest charity is “Tax Relief for Charities”.

Forcing charities to pay tax… that’s not very charitable.

They say charity begins at home… so now we have to pay Home Tax.

World Vision, Oxfam and Care Australia are groups which are under threat from the new rules. Peter Costello wants to make sure that his brother pays at least as much tax as him.

And the Tax Office has introduced Tax Bins for people to easily get rid of their unwanted second-hand money.

If you get a bowl of soup from the salvos you’re going to have to provide them with an invoice.

It’s understandable – the government don’t want to subsidise groups who are just going to spend their time pestering them to subsidise some stupid cause.

Some groups, like Greenpeace and World Vision, are finding it hard to get government approval – although they have issued tax exemption to newer “non-partisan” groups like Greenwar and New World Vision (OR: New World Order Vision).

By Wok and Mat

Warwick Holt and Mat Blackwell are long-time writing partners, who created the mega-award winning web series Bruce, and wrote loads of jokes for TV shows including Good News Week, The Sideshow and The Glass House. Several years of their raw material for those shows is posted right here on this blog.

Leave a Reply