(Image: Getty)

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: if someone uses sovereign citizen terminology, don’t get them to do your taxes.

An unfortunate Perth man has found that out the hard way, being fined $14,000 by the Australian Tax Office after attempting to claim seemingly every single dollar he spent in a year.

He had apparently attended a two-day seminar in August 2019, which told him tax was a voluntary process. Newly enlightened, he claimed $74,501.72 as “other work-related expenses” on his 2019 tax return. This claim was to — in the words of his affadavit — “sustain the life of the living soul answering to the name ‘Steven Russell Oxby’ ”.

The fine was confirmed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal last week, after the senior tribunal member hearing the case concluded it was not carelessness that had led Oxby to claim more than 70 grand back in tax.

The case is redolent of the sovereign citizen movement, which believes humans are in an oppressive contract with governments, which are actually fraudulent corporations. Further, the movement teaches that through various declarations (such as declaring oneself a “living soul”, or voicing one’s objection to a legal process) and use of punctuation (cop a load of One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts’ pre-parliamentary letters to then PM Julia Gillard, in which he refers to himself as “Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul”) they can break that contract. This, handily, exempts you from taxes, having to mask up in a pandemic or having to pull over for cops.

Western Australia, the perpetual malcontent of federation, has always punched above its weight when it comes to sovereign citizens and micronations — fittingly, the population keeps trying to break away from the state that’s always trying to break away from the nation.