Jeremy Tai

7.00 AM

I wake up to a cool, sunny morning. My mood is entirely dependent on the weather, so it’s nice that the universe has dictated that I will be able to experience happiness today. So as to make the most of the sunshine, I walk to my local café, pick up a coffee and a croissant, and eat it in a park nearby my house with my dog.

I arrive back home and log on for the day. I have a look at my emails and loosely organise my tasks for the day: ongoing background tasks, new tasks that have come in over the weekend, and tasks I probably should’ve done before logging off on Friday. I catch up on some of these tasks while I also make sure I fill in my timesheets from last week before I face the wrath of our internal accounts team.

9.15 AM

Since starting to work from home, we’ve had daily catch ups in small groups within our division as a way to stay in touch. Today, we have a chat about the US election and play a quick (and questionable) round of Pictionary.

9.30 AM

First job of the day is making a start on drafting the Income Tax Return for one of our international software clients. This process largely builds on the work we undertook at tax provision time, mainly making adjustments for any changes to the accounts passed in by the auditors and calculating the figures needed for the return form disclosures. It looks as if we don’t have all the required information to complete the International Dealings Schedule, so I draft an email with queries to send back to the client.

11.30 AM

I have a meeting with a manager to brief me on a task for a new client – this will involve setting up their current tax calculation workpapers on our proprietary tax software so that we are able to automate parts of the process in future years. After our discussion, I’m left with an awkward amount of time before I usually head to lunch. I do some admin tasks and send out a few emails before I call it and grab some food.

12.30 PM

I have leftovers for lunch and spend an hour scrolling on Tiktok. When someone asks what I did during my break I say I was reading thinkpieces on the US election result.

1.30 PM

I make a start on preparing a basic advisory piece regarding the tax treatment of the various costs involved in an abandoned development project. I do some initial research into the relevant legislation and case law and write a list of further questions on aspects of the project costs which we may need additional detail on. I also set out the basic structure of the advice so it’s ready to go when we hear back from the client.

3.00 PM

Q time – another daily ritual in the tax division. The allocated quizmaster asks us today’s questions from The Age’s daily quiz. As per usual, I am largely unhelpful.

3.15 PM

I jump around between other tasks until the end of the day. I call the ATO regarding a client issue with the tax portal, finalise a reasonably arguable position paper we were writing on the tax treatment of compensation payments, make further updates to another client’s tax return based on their responses to our queries, and liaise with the ATO’s CRS team in order to advise another client on their reporting obligations.

5.45 PM

I log off for the day and get ready to meet my friends for dinner. It’s a hot day and we want to eat outside while enjoying the sunset. One advantage of working from home – we can get from the office to the beach in 15 minutes. We grab some fish and chips and eat it on the shore.

8.30 PM

Throughout lockdown I have been adamant about exercising every day and I refuse to let that stop now that we’re allowed outside again. That being said, I’m very tired at this point, so I lift some heavy things half-heartedly for an hour before showering and getting ready for bed.

10.30 PM

I give in to sleep’s warm embrace.