Life Made Simple

In this day and age we're constantly trying to make every day tasks and activities as simple as possible. Marketing departments have followed this initiative and we now find ourselves bombarded with all sorts of simpler avenues for using companies and services. We have simplified internet banking, simplified queuing systems, we have pre-paid advantages and fast-track avenues coming out of our ears. We even have a new and improved simplified tax return system called eTax.

I've just had the pleasure of using eTax, and can conclude that yes, things now appear a lot simpler to me; the inefficiencies of the government are as clear as day.

Was I able to lodge my tax return in a simple and quick fashion? No.
Am I now sitting pretty on a nice lump sum in my bank account due to the speedy response of eTax? No.
Will I now have to phone the tax office, rifle through last year's paperwork, and generally waste a shit load of my time in order to be told that I'll have to use the old paper based system to lodge my return, regardless of the existence of the Tax Made Simple approach? Yes.

I'm telling you - it's just not good enough. Why do people even bother to invent these simpler approaches when they only work for those few people in the world who were blessed with the name 'John Sample', have no debt, no income, and don't even launder their non-work-related clothing in order to prevent the onset of a potential deduction.

If life is inherently complicated, why change fate? Why don't we just make things complicated and let the simpletons struggle for a change?