Taxable earnings

New York

April in the Bagel is as good as it gets. The girls are back in their summer dresses, people are crowding the outdoor cafés, and Central Park is an explosion of greens and pinks. Spring, as the song says, is busting out all over.

And the taxman cometh — though not for 41 per cent of NYers. Last week, on tax day, it was revealed that an eye-popping 41 per cent of the state’s filers did not pay any federal income tax last year. I don’t know the London figures, but I’d guess they’d be about the same. Being on the dole nowadays is good business, and being on the fiddle is the business of today. And the steady rise in the number of people removed from income tax rolls is the best business of all. Having many children will get you off the list, and if you can guess who is having the fewest children among blacks, Hispanics and whites, I will lend you my boat for a week this summer. Which I cannot do unless I’m on board because EU regulations say so. Just imagine. I pay for the bloody thing 52 weeks a year and keep a crew year round, which upkeeps the boat. Then one day I feel like lending the boat to a friend for a long weekend, which I did last year to a member of the Spectator family.

Had we been found out, the fines imposed by the bureaucrooks in Brussels would have been close to the value of the boat, which is quite high, I may add. The rules say so because Italians and other types rent their boats out and don’t declare their profits to the taxman. So the crooks in Brussels decree that the poor little Greek boy cannot lend his boat to anyone, even to the deputy editor of the Speccie, or else.