First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu
(Email: babawill2000@gmail.com Twitter: @Babawilly)
Good news is best served hot. The one who first tells the King about an event that gladdens his heart gets a reward. It does not even matter if the talebearer did not contribute anything to event’s accomplishment. For being the newsman he collects his tax. Likewise, those sat around the King when good tidings fall on his ears place taxation on the resultant royal jollity.
The wine vaults are commanded to be opened and everyone present becomes a beneficiary of the royal largess. Some lucky chiefs might even get to keep the golden goblets when the party is over.
All good news is taxed. All attainment is greeted with smiles that progress to mouths held wide open in expectation of food and choice drinks.
Take my friend Joe B who got home one night all smiles. He told his lady he had been promoted and that his promotion had been backdated 12 months causing the accounts department to deposit £20,000 into his bank account. Joe B had a good night fuelled by the happiness that unexpected windfalls bring. The next morning, his lady’s shoes looked a bit too old to her as did her car. Her skin also developed a strange itch usually suffered by those lacking in exotic holidays. By the time he changed her wardrobe, car and booked the flight for a holiday of a lifetime he was heavily leaning on his credit cards. He has been hit by Good news tax (but luckily it was summer. The rates are astronomical in the Christmas season).
What is the solution you ask? Well, it is a simple thing called DTE: Domestic Tax Evasion.
Follow these principles and your life will be sweeter when good fortune hits your shores
- You will not explode if you do not tell. Good new sometimes behaves like an expanding chewing gum that is destined to be spat out. The truth is that with discipline it can be kept in. If you win the lottery, tell no one,
- Everyone was as happy as they would ever be before your good news came into being. You do not need to cheer anyone up with your good news. Let every man cheer himself up.
- Don’t accept any interviews from journalists to tell about your fabulous life and achievements.
- If you cannot cope with No 3, then launch a reality TV show and make money from talking about your good news. That way you would afford the tax that would surely follow.
- Launch a perfume range for your followers who think that smelling like you (that sweet smell of success) will actually make them successful.
- Don’t feel guilty. Tax evasion is a crime in the eyes of the Inland Revenue Department (IRS) but merely a prerogative among friends and family.
- Don’t change anything when sudden wealth arrives. Just become more stingy. (When they call you Ebenezer Scrooge just tell yourself they meant Ebenezer Obey and your bank balance stays black)
- If a broke guy pushes you out of the line and takes your place, be humble. Don’t throw you financial weight around.
- Take acting classes; and act the part of the hard up pauper. Pretend to have no cash and always be in character. That way, no one approaches you to be the Angel investor for their half- baked silly ‘get-rich-never’ schemes.
- Impulse investing is better than impulse buying
- Boost your ego in ways other than spending. Be the guy who lifts the heaviest weights in the gym and tell everyone about it. Scream loudest when Messi scores. It is much cheaper being a die-hard Barca-for-life guy dressed in a bootleg strip. Never aim for having the hottest car on the block (Exceptions – see No 4).
- Pay me 10% of your new found wealth for a one to one intensive course in domestic tax evasion. I know you are a man of faith and God did great things for you but, bros, shine eye bifor you give testimony to di wrong persin.
African culture and good news tax
In the book Things Fall Apart, Prof Chinua Achebe gave insights into aspects of Igbo culture. Men without titles where called Agbala (women). Wealth was required for acquisition of titles and one got rich through the strength of one’s hoe in the farm. The more yams produced the better were one’s prospects. When good fortune came to a man by way of a mighty harvest of yams; (the king of crops) and he acquired titles, his wife wore on her ankles insignia of his titles that showed everyone that she was the wife of a titled man. She in other words collected good news tax. A man could not hide his title from his wife so there was no tax invasion possible. There was also no need for any domestic tax invasion as the man was boss and he did as he pleased with the family resources.
So one could argue that good news tax is in keeping with African culture especially within the context of marriage and that domestic tax evasion is not an African behaviour.
I end with P-Square….the guys who love to pay good news tax. You must chop my moni cos’ I get am plenti. Je m’appelle Chop moni!!!!!!
So choose this day what you are. A modern day domestic tax evader or a romantic old school African man whose good fortune shows on his lady before it shows on himself.
As for the ladies worldwide, hmmm, they get good news but tell the guy to take them out to celebrate the news and then pay the tax. Dia rez God.
