PLEASURE, DO SOMETHING JUST FOR FUN. PLEASURE IS ONE OF LIFE'S ESSENTIAL NUTRIENTS.

A RETIRED Sydney barrister who did not pay tax for 11 years has been ordered to pay a massive $5.7 million to the Australian Tax Office.Michael John Glennan's past finally caught up with him yesterday when he became the latest silk to lose a legal challenge against the tax office.
The result is another win for the ATO which has been pursuing a group of serial defaulting Sydney barristers since the problem was revealed in 2001.
The NSW Supreme Court ordered Mr Glennan to pay the bill after Master Joanne Harrison found his long-running case against the ATO was "hopeless" and "vexatious".
Mr Glennan, who declared himself bankrupt 11 years ago was also slugged with the tax office's legal costs.

The total amount he is due to pay to the tax man includes $4.9 million in tax and penalties plus $800,000 in interest. The tax office has calculated the amount owed to the nearest cent as $5,667,207.09.
He admitted liability for the bill for 10 out of the 11 financial years between 1980 and 1991 when he did not pay tax.
But Mr Glennan did not accept that he had to pay the tax on the 1987-88 year when he received a $1.4 million payment after winning a lawsuit.
The suit related to Mr Glennan's work on preliminary designs of the Sydney Harbour Tunnel including selecting the tunnel's route and drawing cross-sectional diagrams, Master Harrison said.
The fight over the assessment on income tax for the 1987-88 financial year has been pursued through the legal system for eight years, from the Administrative Appeals tribunal, to the Federal Court and the High Court.
Master Harrison said Mr Glennan had argued his case "in a somewhat unusual manner" and that Mr Glennan had begun representing himself after firing his solicitor part way through the hearing.
Both the Tax Office and Mr Glennan declined to comment yesterday.
The Bar Association has the power to cancel their members' licences if they become bankrupt.
Following revelations in 2001 that dozens of barristers were dodging their tax obligations and then hiding their assets, Federal and NSW attorney-generals pledged that bankrupt barristers would be denied government work.
The tax office has launched a blitz on high-income earners who use "aggressive, bordering on illegal" minimisation schemes.
The chief of the squad for serious non-compliance, Michael Monaghan, a first assistant commissioner and 30-year veteran of the ATO, said last year that high-income professionals who had defied the tax system "persistently and almost in contempt" were targets.
A recent government report showed about 200 high-income professionals, including 89 solicitors and barristers, had used failure to lodge returns and bankruptcy to avoid $20 million of income tax in the five years to 2001.
"Barristers constitute a particular area of concern," the report noted. The Australian

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