Playing with Players: The Sacred and Profane meanderings of a Tax Auditor

05/28/2020

Playing with Players: The reflective novel "Playing with Players" dives deep into the intricacies of Canadian tax codes and the broader meaning of the law. In Chris Stock’s novel "Playing with Players", an eccentric but skilled Canadian tax auditor investigates tax...

03/20/2020

Website address;

www.playingwithplayers.com

or
https://playingwithplayers.com/

“Every man is entitled, if he can, to order his affairs so that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it would otherwise be. If he succeeds in ordering them so as to secure this result, then, however unappreciative the Commissioners of Inland Revenue or his fellow taxpayers ma...

03/11/2020

My Profile Picture is me diving off Bequia in 1988. What ir doesn’t show is this little fellow below meandering around on the ocean bottom.

This shows the “not quite” endless youthfulness of a lobster. Lobsters are able to endlessly repair their DNA thereby avoiding senescence or old age. “Not quite” though because as it evolves its shell cannot change size and it succumbs to exhaustion in its constant molting.(Think, “ a knight without armor in a savage land” from “The Ballad of Palladin” (sung by Johnny Western) Have Gun Will Travel (1957-63). Furthermore the meandering creature’s mating process lasts just 10 seconds. Apparently one of the drawbacks of being eternally young is that you learn absolutely nothing about foreplay.

A lobster contains both an individual self (the living, ever-young creature) and an institutional self common to its species (the shell).

When institutions no longer keep up with the individual the self dies.
When the self’s aspirations exceed the institution’s bounds the institution fades away.

03/09/2020

MESSAGE FROM “THE IRREDEEMABLE DEEMING GUY”

Following below is the first review of my novel. Actually it’s not so much a review as it is an evaluation by my hybrid publisher, FriesenPress (“FP”), to ascertain its validity for publication. I chose the self publishing route over the traditional publishing route as the folks at FP treated me like family. I would like to drill down on my publishing experiences in future posts. These would include Manuscript Preparation, Editing, Revisions, Designs of Covers, Production, Book Formatting, Print Distribution and Promotion. So if you think that is worthwhile, and possibly helpful to aspiring writers, please let me know.

Summary: Playing with Players is the fictional memoir of Alice, a single mother and former es**rt now studying accounting and tax law, who recounts her relationship with Jack, a tax auditor. Throughout this narrative, we learn of Jack’s childhood, his adventures with tax auditing, his relationships and s*xual encounters with various women, which all culminate in his murder on the autumnal equinox. Along the way, the author interweaves portions of Canadian tax law and significant court decisions, introducing the reader to their intricacies and significance, though often taken for granted and not interrogated further. This book will be enjoyed by anyone with a career in accounting or tax enforcement as well as a general adult audience with an interest in the subject of tax law.

BISAC codes: BISAC or Book Industry Subject and Category codes are numbers that represent book categories. Whereas the search keywords are to help the reader locate your book, the BISAC codes are in place to help the retailer or book seller know in which section to stock or list your book. You are allowed a maximum of three codes for any given book, and they are sorted in order of relevance. Here are my recommendations, in descending order. Please feel free to replace them with any codes that you feel are more appropriate: FIC041000: Fiction, Biographical FIC034000: Fiction, Legal BUS064000: Business & Economics, Taxation Search
Keywords: One of the ways that book buyers will be able to find your book online is through searching keywords on sites such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. These words serve as flags for online databases. You can choose up to seven keywords to help guide people to your book. Some good examples are main themes, characters, and/or places where the story takes place. Think of someone trying to find your book in Google. What would they search? Note: you can have a 2 maximum of seven keywords, but you can have up to 20 characters per keyword (this is because some keywords are phrases, e.g. "Good Versus Evil"). The following are some key thematic phrases based on the content of your book to get you started on reviewing and selecting your marketing keywords. We recommend you perform a Google search to understand what kind of results these phrases bring up. This will enable you to adjust or refine your keywords accordingly. If you would like additional support, please contact your publishing specialist. • Tax auditing • Canadian tax law • Fictional memoir • Statutory interpretation • Tax evasion • Frame narrative • Literary allusion

Opening Comments: Dear Chris, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to FriesenPress for editorial review. You bring such a wealth of knowledge about the intricacies of tax law to this story. I’m sure your fellow auditors and accountants will enjoy reading it, and—since it’s presented in the context of an accessible narrative—so will a more general audience. What follows is my editorial evaluation of the manuscript, detailing some of its strengths and potential areas of improvement, as well as my editorial recommendation for next steps. Strengths: As I’ve mentioned already, your knowledge of tax law and auditing (and even, impressively, comparative tax law between Canada and the United States) shines brightly throughout this story. It’s a fantastic opportunity to make tax law accessible and comprehensible to the layperson. I was also particularly intrigued by the frame narrative structure you used, in which Bob, the tax law professor the reader is introduced to at the beginning, reads Alice’s memoirs about her relationship with Jack, which are reproduced and make up the bulk of the text. I thought it was a bit reminiscent of the “found manuscript” trope prevalent in a lot of gothic fiction, so you’re in great company! Finally, I can’t think of anything more original than detecting Miltonian undertones in the world of tax auditing—bravo!

OK so I left out some of the book’s shortcomings only because I think I rectified them in the revision process. But if you want to read those as well, feel free to ask.

The novel should be available in May.

If you’d like to review the entire series of posts please click on my Facebook Profile and it is included in my Time Line.

03/05/2020

Occasionally I wonder about how I would answer the question "Can you please explain your book in one sentence?"
Used to think of the answer as "No One Is Above The Law." But then in my novel that phrase went through several iterations:

No one is above the law. But everyone has Appellate processes available to dispute the law.

While “No One is Above the Law” it would appear that when tax laws are created and withheld Parliamentary assent they are subject to influence.

So I settled upon a Yogi-ism, with some Miltonic influence:
"If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be!' Felix culpa!

03/04/2020

ABOUT THE BOOK:

"Every man is entitled, if he can, to order his affairs so that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it would otherwise be. If he succeeds in ordering them so as to secure this result, then, however unappreciative the Commissioners of Inland Revenue or his fellow taxpayers may be of his ingenuity, he cannot be compelled to pay an increased tax.”

With these words, judge Lord Tomlin absolved the Duke of Westminster of any wrongdoing in the 1936 landmark tax avoidance case Inland Revenue Commissioners v. Duke of Westminster—and seemingly dared countless others to likewise find creative ways of reducing their owed tax.

But what does this mean for Jack, a tax auditor tasked with enforcing compliance by uncovering unregulated tax avoidance schemes and exploited loopholes? How does the ever-evolving nature of complex tax law manifest itself in Jack’s life and the lives of those he encounters?

Jack’s story is immortalized by Alice, an es**rt and single mother with whom he develops a close bond, in her memoirs recounting their relationship and everything she learned from their time together.

Jack’s career is filled with intrigue, confrontation, s*x, isolation, and even violence at the hands of those who believe they’re above the law. And yet, in the midst of it all, his life is full of little miracles found in unexpected places.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Chris Stock holds a B.A. in English from Queens University and an M.B.A. in Finance and Accounting from McMaster University. Playing with Players, his debut novel, is inspired by his love of wordplay combined with his expertise in tax law. He retired in 2012 after working for more than three decades in accounting and auditing professions and currently resides in Belleville, Ontario—formerly known as Asaukhknosk, “the place where the rushes end”—with his beloved Yorkie, Jack.

03/04/2020

My cover is an illustration by Gustave Dore (circa 1800's) depicting a courteous, and curiosity laden, conversation between the prelapsarian Adam and Eve and the Angel Raphael from Book V of John Milton's "Paradise Lost."

03/03/2020

My publisher (FriesenPress) and I collaborated on this trailer to my novel "Playing with Players."