TAX EVADERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 895, 28 September 1956, Page 31

TAX EVADERS

AS long as there has been a State or its equivalent in any part of the world, as long as history has been recorded, there has occurred that phenomenon which is dreaded by rich and poor -taxation. T-Men, which will be heard from 1ZB on Monday evenings, starting on October 1, concerns a_ fictional taxation authority, the Federal Department of Taxation and Revenue, whose chief special investigatiorrofficer is Jack Ketch, appropriately named after the notorious hangman. Ketch is like no real tax investigator anywhere, except in his hatred of tax evaders who, he says, "make the going a little tougher for honest taxpayers year after year." Every

case dealt with by Ketch is a completely fictional creation of the author, Donovan Joyce, who says "All I do is create a character. Once I have him it is absurdly easy to evolve a way in which he, because of his character, will go to work to evade tax." Throughout the series it is emphasised that no schemes for evading taxat least none on a large scale-can hope to succeed. It is considered unlikely, too, that listeners might be encouraged to attempt one of the many evasion methods presented. It is undoubtedly true that many of the types of taxation evasion methods used in this programme have actually been used all over the world. They are presented, says the synopsis of T-Men, as a warning to the listening audience that each is a known method, and that they have no hope of getting away with something similar,