Why You Shouldn’t Let Drug Dealers Handle Your Financial Affairs

Have you ever noticed how all “addicts” in those “OH GOD DON’T BECOME AN ADDICT OR YOUR FACE WILL BECOME PREGNANT AND YOU’LL IMPLODE” scare campaign ads look exactly the same? It doesn’t even matter what the addiction is – drugs, gambling, chronic masturbation, using Microsoft Publisher to create fuchsia-heavy signage – all the “addict” models have the same look. I present some examples:

As far as I can gather, the basic guidelines to any anti-addiction advertising are:

• Take one genuinely attractive model
• Have them run through a paintball field without any protection (yes – even the gambling guy – look at his face! Those cards are BRUISING him)
• Remove at least one upper-body item of clothing
• Force-feed an entire case of West Coast Cooler to the model
• If there’s any toilet seats nearby, apply Yogo

Then there’s the facial expressions. Precisely what is the photographer demanding of these folk? “Pretend you’ve just received a Five for Fighting album for Christmas!” from the looks of things.

More than anything else, I’m wondering exactly how a model finds themselves stuck in a niche that only allows them to find work as a troubled addict. It’s a skill, to be certain, but how transferable is it beyond appearing as someone crying in a Kings of Leon music video or something along those lines? Think these things through, you bloody models, or you’ll end up as a drug-dealing-accountant in no time!

What, you say? Drug-dealing-accountant? Well, as tax time draws nearer, I feel it’s my responsibility to offer my single piece of accounting advice to you all.

DO. NOT. LET. DRUG. DEALERS. HANDLE. YOUR. FINANCIAL. AFFAIRS.

No, really. Let me explain.

My partner, Adam, freelances for a living. Not disclosing if it’s as a jiggly dancer or an art director, I’ll leave that up to you to discern. But the point is that he needed someone to handle the financial affairs for his personal business. Having long been scarred by my high school accounting teacher’s intestinal gas problems (profit and loss statements are now synonymous with spicy red curry to me), I threw my hands in the air like I didn’t fiscally care.

“You need to let a professional handle all that guff,” I protested. So we did. A mate of a mate of a mate knew a mate who was an accountant. Sorted. He had a business card and seemed professional enough, so off we went.

Around eight months down the track, I began thinking it was rather strange that Adam’s quarterly BAS statements had stopped turning up in our mailbox, but figured the accountant knew what he was doing. After querying this with Adam, he remarked something along the lines that he didn’t want to be bothered by BAS anyway – after all, “BAS” sounded like a cheap form of amphetamines manufactured in a shed at Hopper’s Crossing. This comment would eventually prove to be a form of bollock-crushing foresight.

You see, as time went on, I’m pretty sure we came to believe this accountant was so hyper-efficient that he was gallantly protecting us from a formidable land of Tax Office sadism. We barely heard a peep from him, just some insistent reassurance that everything was being taken care of. Probably our own fault for not looking into things a bit closer, but we really didn’t think Adam’s business affairs were that complicated.

Out of the blue, one day Adam received a phone call from the Federal Police. “I didn’t mean to drag that gigantic TV from the 1970s down the street with me! I was drunk and it looked like it was left out as rubbish!” he immediately protested.

“No, er.. that’s not what we’re calling about,” the cop on the end of the phone muttered. “Look, I just wanted to check if this particular fella we’ve arrested happens to be your accountant.”

This is when it transpired that our accountant had defrauded the Tax Office to the tune of almost $50,000 under Adam’s business, via GST fraud. After some research, we eventually discovered the guy hadn’t been a certified practicing accountant for some time, and generally considered it much more fun to both deal and use meth for a living. The total amount he’d managed to defraud, via his various sucker clients, approached $1 million dollars. Dude, I know you’re a fucking meth addict and all, but you must have some idea when to stop before you get noticed?

This whole shambles cost us an awful lot in accountant’s fees to get the debt written off (that’s real accountants, not injecting-your-GST-payments-up-their arm accountants). To this day, every time we so much as breathe in an ATO public servant’s direction who glances at Adam’s account, the whole thing comes undone and they determine that we owe them $50,000 again. It’s a pain in the arse and we hardly did anything wrong, except be a little ignorant of the fact that our accountant was a massive drug dealer across Melbourne’s western suburbs.

So choose your accountant wisely. Where possible, separate your accountant from your drug dealer, too. And if you’re a model, ensure you expand your skillset.

Tagged as: Adam, Addiction, Drugs, Models