Author Claims Google On Her Tax

When in doubt, google it. That's been my motto since... well since 1998. Thank you +Larry Page and +Sergey Brin. Why am I blogging something so random?

Let me start from the beginning then.

When I first began writing google wasn't around. That statement alone makes me feel old. So I wrote from my imagination, from what I had seen on TV and movies, from what I have read over the years. This limits what you can write without travelling, reaching out to organisations and the good old encyclopedia (for you young ones, that is the book version of an accurate wikki.)

What did this mean for my writing... um less specifics and more assumptions, less details and more putty.

Now, thanks to google I write crime with body parts and guns and bullets and drugs with specifics! I write love stories in places I have never been to. I have made wonderful friends thousands of miles from home but never met face to face before. All thanks to Google and the internet. I guess you can thank facebook and +Mark Zuckerberg for the friends part, but you get the gist.

This is where I get to the point of the post. Here in Australia it is tax time. It is the time where I have to explain to my tax agent, whom I pay $400 well earned dollars to sort my finances out, why it is I wish to claim some dosh back from the government. Her assistant calls me Friday and wants to know how much I truly use my internet for Author purposes. Um, I say, I don't think I could possibly write without google research. It stays open for research as well as when I know what word I'm after but only google can sort my shit out. 

He says, can you give me a percentage? 

Um, I chortle before continuing, I don't know math but how about I throw it to you like a problem solver. If I was to write for one hour a day, at least I hope to, and then email and social media for an hour, what would the percentage be over a year?

He laughs and says, does fifty percent sound fine?

I'm happy with that.

There has been many a time where I thought if I were to be audited how would I prove what I use, there has also been many a time where I feared home security or the ATF would burst through the door and arrest me because my google searches suggest I am a serial killing, date drugging, romantic gun trafficker.

I wonder if I could claim a lawyer for tax purposes. 

I'll have to google it.