Treasurer Scott Morrison and I have very different understandings of what comprises a “Taxed-Not,” a term it was yesterday alleged on Twitter he plagiarised from a Fox News anchor who coined it some six years ago.
Leaving aside the curly questions of whether or not it is possible to plagiarise Fox News and the length of time it’s taken Morrison to allegedly do it, the term is an ugly characterisation of human beings. So I naturally assumed it refers to those who are ugly in their behaviours.
When I first heard Morrison use it (apart from an immediate association with Dr Seuss) I thought, oh, the treasurer is referring to the churches, the mining magnates, the media moguls, the corporations, and the many politicians who rort the public purse for their private and/or ideological gain.
Friends, I could not have been more wrong. It turns out the “Taxed-Nots” are welfare recipients, and Morrison seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that if he takes from them what little they have, he will restore the budget to surplus.
Now I am, outside of my own relatively simple budget, financially illiterate but even I can see that taking the price of a cup of coffee from people on Newstart and pensioners is unlikely to curtail the budget deficit. I tried to begin a conversation with Mr Morrison about this on Twitter, but he blocked me. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear.
Perhaps I unthinkingly insulted Morrison’s faith. He’s a Happy Clapper at Hillsong, a Pentecostal outfit that believes God wants everyone to be rich and if you aren’t it’s because God doesn’t love you and if God doesn’t love you, you deserve what you (don’t) get because you are morally deficient. Like a Taxed-Not.
The term encapsulates a powerful, deliberately false dichotomy of wealth with morality and poverty with immorality that appeals even to the non-religious.
There are surely many avenues available to the treasurer that would go some way towards addressing the country’s allegedly parlous financial state. It would, for example, cost us a couple of billion less to resettle refugees from Nauru and Manus Island in Australia, rather than continue to bribe less developed nations to shoulder our responsibilities at the cost of some $55 million for two individuals.
Then there’s the $160 million plus marriage equality plebiscite: totally unnecessary if only the parliament would do its job.
Then there’s the $1.615 billion VET FEE-HELP loans rort. Yes, that’s $1.615 billion gone up in Joe Hockey’s cigar smoke.
Plus the ideologically driven and/or vengeful Royal Commissions, tax concessions to the wealthy, really, it can’t be that hard to grub up a bit more cash, can it, Mr Morrison? Try the almost 600 companies who pay little or no tax, such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft, for starters.
There obviously are people who rort the welfare system. But I suspect their numbers are inconsequential compared to the rorting wealthy.
In the LNP universe the wealthy don’t rort: they are entitled. In the LNP universe poverty equals immorality and therefore lack of all entitlement, indeed, in the LNP universe if you’re out of a job you don’t actually deserve to eat & they’ll take another $4 off you to make that even more clear.
Morrison and his multi-millionaire boss Malcolm Turnbull bullying the disadvantaged into deeper disadvantage while the wealthy flourish. What would Jesus say?
No Place For Sheep 
Just so. The hypocrisy and self-centredness of the LNP, and especially the Christian holy roller variety and Morrison in particular is breathtaking.
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DQ, where do they think this will all end, or do they simply not give a shit?
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I think it is mostly a matter of posturing and a distraction tactic – “look over there, a welfare cheat!”
But then again, the Looters & Nutters Party is crammed to the gunwhales with arseholes.
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And we completely agree with that.
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What happened to their Jobs and Growth project? Having a job usually means that you also pay tax; the more you earn to the more tax you pay, or that’s what I believed.
Then I came to Australia, and I realised it was not at all about paying taxes, but about tax avoidance.
It was almost like a weird National sport.
If the schools, hospitals, roads were falling in disrepair, the governments cried: we have no money, no revenue coming in.
The votes shouted: we pay too much tax, our taxes are highest in the Southern Hemisphere, actually they said: in whole wide world.
Not true, I knew, after having lived in the Northern Hemisphere, where people and businesses pay HIGH taxes , but they also get PLENTY in return.
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It still amazes me that I have friends who are high income earners, in many ways liberal green voters yet are completely open about their tax evasion. They’ll vote for the country to “do the right thing” because that’s important, but don’t see the hypocrisy of being selfish arseholes themselves. “But I have to pay for private schools, and this mcmansion isn’t cheap to run”… smells like bullshit to me. Part of being a high earner is exactly paying high taxes. If you can’t afford it after paying to support the society you live in, you can’t afford it.
I do like the US thing where candidates at higher levels are expected to disclose their tax returns. And some European countries where tax return summaries are public. We should do that here. I would be quite happy to have people know that I earn X, donate Y and pay Z tax.
Also, regularly flabbergasted at people who whine about having to pay extra tax every year… which says, more than anything else, that they donate nothing to charity. I mean, just fuck off, people. Is there no charity, nothing at all, no-one doing anything in your community, that you think makes Australia a better place and deserves your support?
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Find new ‘friends’.
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When my neighbour introduces her friends to me, she always adds, she’s an old Frensham girl, he’s an ex- Chev. boy…I had to learn it meant Chevalier.
I have to find NEW neighbours.
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Oh gawd, Helvi I used to know people like that & now I don’t anymore life is so much more pleasant.
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> Find new ‘friends’.
I’d rather try to fix the ones I have. Walking away and leaving the turd in the punchbowl is almost as antisocial as putting it there in the first place.
I also find it useful to have a variety of friends, it helps keep me aware of just how much I live in a little deep green bubble of my own creation. It’s one thing to read statistics on our power bill saying “your house consumes very slightly more power than the average single person household” (we have 6 adults in a share house), but completely different to visit someone I’ve known for 20 years and see how, exactly, a house with four adults can use (much, much) more than four times as much electricity as our household does. And hear them talking about ways to reduce that, and how hard it is. Which reveals that my twenty-plus years of small, incremental lifestyle changes look like an impossibly huge leap into extreme asceticism. It’s a useful re-calibration.
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Lead that horse to water,Moz.Good luck.If it drops flog it.
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What confounds me, is what do Morrison et al actually think is going to happen to people who receive welfare? What they attempt amounts to a financial genocide.
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Not really into thinking things through, this LNP crowd
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Actually, I realise that thinking and LNP ought not to be in the same sentence, diannart
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They forget that a large part of the reason they are able to amass wealth and assets is because of our strong legislative systems and protections, as well as good quality infrastructure, all paid for by taxes levied on previous generations. It is these people, not the unemployed, who are parasites.
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Patagonian, they also forget that without workers they can exploit they would have no wealth in the first place.
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Too true Jennifer. The balance has shifted in the last 30 years. Once upon a time workers were respected for their contribution to the economy, and employers understood the symbiotic nature of the relationship but in recent times we have been treated as resources…human resources who are there to be exploited and who should be grateful to have a job.
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Symbiotic to >host / parasite in 2 decades.
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Is it illegal to make a list of all the things this empty headed,maggot hearted LNP dweeb would sue people for saying?
And surely someone in his past life has a photo of him doing something off the Richter Scale of morality to a live animal?
What has happened to the MSM, where are they probing?
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Ah, the probe. What has happened to the probe
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I’d like to probe the MSM myself.
Free!
Probe bono,
: )
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😀
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🙂 very creative, Hypo, no need to recycle Menzies..
Even ‘jobs and growt’ was second-hand, not so innovative, Mal !
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I doubt is would cause him a moment’s consternation. His belief system insulates him. https://web.archive.org/web/20140719022651/http:/www.kingstribune.com/index.php/weekly-email/item/2052-scott-morrison-and-the-conveniently-comforting-doctrine-of-predestination
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Yes, Patagonian, this is where it becomes impossible to proceed with people such as Morrison: they believe there’s a better world awaiting them, so it hardly matters what is done with this one.
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Or what THEY do to others in this one.It’s all pre-ordained by God, so there is no guilt felt.
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If jesus existed, and or he poked his head up, he would say don’t build a religion around an ancient activist who spent their time just mouthing common sense humane behavioural tendencies, just do the right thing.
I think the only real god,(Monty Python) articulated it best,but it went over the head of the hypocritical,racist,bigoted,gutless,brain dead, cover up,foot soldiers, who weaselled their way into power,because they have no life or employment skills,so politics is their default scam.
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And they aren’t very good at their default scam either, Hypo.
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Happily I have a lead for ole’ Hillsong, whose family will never see a ‘recession’ because of all the money ‘his’ family of Hillsong-robots have, however he might like to refer to good ole’ Aunty: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-11/corporate-tax-minimisation-costs-governments-1-trillion/7587092 if his mob of tories would regulate these people and the filthy rich instead of the average median Australian income families who live on $43,000 per annum, he would be taking a step in the right direction.
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Whoa, I missed that Shaun. Thanks for linking.
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What would Jesus say indeed? Here’s what Scott had to say in his maiden speech to Parliament:
“From my faith I derive the values of loving-kindness, justice and righteousness, to act with compassion and kindness, acknowledging our common humanity and to consider the welfare of others; to fight for a fair go for everyone to fulfil their human potential and to remove whatever unjust obstacles stand in their way, including diminishing their personal responsibility for their own wellbeing; and to do what is right, to respect the rule of law, the sanctity of human life and the moral integrity of marriage and the family. We must recognise an unchanging and absolute standard of what is good and what is evil. Desmond Tutu put it this way:
… we expect Christians … to be those who stand up for the truth, to stand up for justice, to stand on the side of the poor and the hungry, the homeless and the naked, and when that happens, then Christians will be trustworthy believable witnesses.”
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F2008-02-14%2F0045%22
His subsequent actions, particularly with asylum seekers, have exposed his rank hypocrisy.
Just one correction though. Morisson’s happy clappy tribe is Shirelive. Hillsong’s congregation includes the execrable Tim ‘Freedom’ Wilson.
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Morrison’s maiden speech is, without doubt, the most egregious example of hypocrisy in the history of Australian democracy. Ironically, it was delivered on Valentine’s Day, 14 Feb 2008, the day after Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations.
While we’re talking about plagiarism, Liberals are good at it. Joe Hockey didn’t invent the terms lifters and leaners himself. He pinched them from a 1942 speech by Robert Menzies.
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Ha ha they haven’t an original bone in their well-fed bodies have they Arthur
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Shirelive. Thanks Ian. I’ll google that.
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“Growing up in a Christian home, I made a commitment to my faith at an early age and have been greatly assisted by the pastoral work of many dedicated church leaders, in particular the Reverend Ray Green and pastors Brian Houston and Leigh Coleman. My personal faith in Jesus Christ is not a political agenda. As Lincoln said, our task is not to claim whether God is on our side but to pray earnestly that we are on His. For me, faith is personal, but the implications are social—as personal and social responsibility are at the heart of the Christian message. In recent times it has become fashionable to negatively stereotype those who profess their Christian faith in public life as ‘extreme’ and to suggest that such faith has no place in the political debate of this country.”
Morrison’s maiden speech, 14 February 2008
Brian Houston (mentioned in his maiden speech) is effectively head honcho of ACC.
“Church names
When the Assemblies of God in Australia was incorporated in 1937, churches generally were the name of the location and then the words Assembly of God. For example, the AOG church in Paradise was called Paradise Assembly of God (the church is now Paradise Community Church). When Frank Houston moved to Australia in 1977 to plant a church in Sydney, he called his church Sydney Christian Life Centre. From his church, Houston planted several others with the Christian Life Centre name.
From the 1990s onwards, there has been a large change in the naming of AOG churches. Many churches with Assembly of God (AOG) or Christian Life Centre (CLC) in their name, changed their name to make it shorter and more generic. Many churches have replaced AOG and CLC with Christian Church or Christian Centre. For example, Shire Christian Centre became Shirelive Church and Mt. Gravatt Assembly of God became Garden City Christian Church. Another trend is for churches to change their name to a popular name or word that represents the church. For example, Hills Christian Life Centrewhich became Hillsong Church once the name Hillsong became more well-known than the church name.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Christian_Churches
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His speech and attitude sums up the bulk of modern western christianity.The other section of this cult spend all their time trying successfully to not condemn the fact that this is a perverted scam and lifestyle choice affording more escape clauses and kickbacks than underworld criminality.
The RC flock has never made a noticeable peep about the serial pedo plague.
(Even though the same anxious bunny boilers and their pet men rant endlessly about private sex lives of total strangers and sexualising kids, and porn and any number of issues outside their hypocritical cult.They expect confessional boxes cover all inhumanities like a blackboard duster.
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“In the LNP universe the wealthy don’t rort: they are entitled. ” The whole NLP ethos in 11 words.
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I can’t help but ask, are you by any chance the Patagonian from the Tabletalk?
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Yes Helvi, great to catch up with you again!
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Welcome aboard. Jennifer may not be as dedicated a political polemicist as Bob Ellis was, but she’s much more even-tempered. And we get time to smell the roses.
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Cheers DQ, good to see that you are here too
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Why, thank you DQ, I’m taking that comment as a compliment.
Nobody could fill Ellis’s shoes and only an idiot would try.
And welcome, Patagonian. 🌹 (a rose to smell)
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Thank you! i need it to mask the stink that is WA politics at the moment.
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Just remember that the voices in nutjob Morrison’s rancid head tell him what to do.
And that he, and no-one else owns them,writes them or hears them.
Not even the non existent ‘dial a jesus’ hears Morrisons cranial fartologies.
These ghouls have overhead bidets such is the level of shite in their heads.
Morrison owns the septic thoughts,combines them with his perverted motives, and consequently he owns the outcomes.
Each and every one of them.
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For sheer kite flying lies and bullshit, have a listen to Morrison, a true ancestor of seventeenth century witch hunters and nineteenth century Dickensian Bible bashing parsimony.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/target-the-havenots-liberals-up-to-the-same-old-tricks-20160826-gr1scu.html
Hopeful this from SMH shows this time, re this Richard Denness article.
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Really, really really great to see Patagonian turn up. Stick around, this is a good blogsite.
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Hey PW, great to catch up with you again too! I’ve been wandering around a bit lost since Bob left us, mostly just making comments on the Australian and upsetting all the RWNJs who spew their bile there. Although I’ve read Jennifer’s wonderful pieces many times, I never realised until recently that there was a comments column. Now if I can just get the WordPress thingy sorted out I will also be able to like comments!
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We can quote their own scriptures at them:
“And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24)
Not many camels can fit the bill. LOL
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It is the ultimate frustration. These people are brought up with Xtianity yet fail on its core tenets in ways that would embarrass the most brainless garden worm.
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In the same way that police are supposed to ‘uphold the law’?
Or politicians do the bidding of the electorate?
The swill of the right are nothing but death and destruction and hate.
They hate peace,creativity and altruism because they counter their core belief system.
Hence the headlong rush to exhaust everything for their own grtaification and within their lifetime if possible.Clarly demonstrated by the fact that there is not cutoff level to how wealthy is too wealthy.Murdoch could not will not spend all his wealth,nor a drop of it, and he will never know joy.But his ilk will do their all to deprive others of any simple joy as well.Oppression is his friend.Yet he cries ‘I’m a liberal””Let freedom reign””Lift thyself up.”
The guy is a gilt coated bogan.
Found a piccy of him getting out of bed in the morning>>
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Looks more like a grogan than a bogan (grogan being what we as teenagers used to call turds)>
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At the risk of being off topic –
I watched a strange doco tonight about the origins of what I prefer to call Daish (aka Islamic State). The doco cast a number of aspersions and quoted/interviewed past operatives and somewhat discredited sources, without any editorial statement as to their credit worthiness. The slightly informed viewer would be left with a number of skewed and misinformed impressions, and be woefully behind the current state of play which it purported to give.
In particular, at no time was it stated that the UN was against involvement in Iraq; at no time was it stated that Russia and China vetoed any intervention against the Syrian regime; at no point was it stated that the Daish would-be caliphate was now itself headless and shrinking.
It seemed to correctly imply without stating it that the invasion of Iraq was based upon the false premise that there was a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. A false premise that VP Cheney insisted upon, all without mentioning George W Bush’s obsession with Saddam. And no mention of the ghostly WMD!
It seemed to imply that Obama should have armed the rebels in Syria, without noting that the Assad regime is recognised as the legitimate government of Syria; and that although such a step has been done before, surreptitiously, it would be an incredibly dangerous precedent to set to do it openly.
In all, it seems to me that it was a dangerous piece of misinformation, despite the usefulness of some of the background information, if the sophisticated viewer could sort out the facts from the opinion of the makers and the dubious interviewees.
I’ll give no link; it doesn’t deserve one.
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What conclusion have you come to as to the purpose of the documentary, DQ?
Or is it no more than badly made & ill informed?
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Cobbled together in a hurry to get it out there before it became even more dated than it is, I suspect. It tries to spread the blame around, even-handedly, whether it was deserved or not.
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The
Americans always tell lies about what they are up to offshore. Then disaster multiplies when they beleive their own lies and starting shooting at what Paddy Shot At after a week on the metho.
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The connection between Daesh and ISIS is a simple one..The dregs of Saddams military were allowed to simmer and create a force to revenge the loss of their leader and their lifestyle.Another foreseeable f*ckup by so called US intelligence.
(Great for weapons and arms magnates aka the usual suspects profiting in the West)
I saw the doco advertised and chose not to give oxygen to it.Seems my BS detector is fully operational.
Besides doco makers gotta feed themselves.
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Saddam Hussein’s regime was secular and anti-religious, at least as much as that is possible in a Muslim country. Daish is a collection of religious extremists which Saddam and Assad of Syria had under control until Bush destabilised the entire middle east by destroying Saddam’s regime.
We may note that Gaddafi was similarly keeping a lid on the religious minority as were many of the other regimes in the region. The “Arab Spring” cynical and hypocritical cries for “democracy!” pulled all the right strings in the West, especially the simplistic Yanks.
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BTW, does not the VETFEEHELP rort encapsulate EVERYTHING that is wrong about Thatcherist market economics right across the spectrum of modern policy making (privatised detention centres?), where the stated public goal is efficiency and the actual goal, the setting of a system whereby despised social and economic infrastructures are handed over to unaccountable crooks in the cause of “small”” (weak) government along with valuable assets previously used for the betterment of people in society?
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Speaking of the perverse insistence on neoliberal dogma, this, in the wake of the census foul up and tonight’s 4 Corners on Data Theft:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/29/privatising-asic-database-not-a-done-deal-coalition-says#comment-82108729
This story was by no means prominent, although that is possibly to do with the chaotic way the Grauniad presents its news.
I like to think I am up on current affairs, but this example got under my radar.
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PW, in one word: yes.
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More proof that LNP Lite(ALP) has as much hide thickness as the LNP.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-boss-george-wright-jumps-ship-for-bhp-billiton-job-20160830-gr49ql.html
Another one jumps the fence.Ideology for sale.[Ask Sam Dastyari]
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I Agree. I actually recently found out a local businesses directory which shows top rated local businesses including top accountants in your city, it’s named Pajix , this is their website http://www.pajix.com , I found my personal accountant (which is top skilled) on there, you can read other customers reviews, check location and accountants prices and then book your appointments online! It’s really convenient
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