Book Review: Never Smile at a Crocodile by Paul DioGuardi

This book (available here on Amazon) of several dozen two to four page mini-stories, is a disparate random collection with many messages:

• cautionary tale about the single-minded unforgiving nature of the CRA bureaucracy and the dangers of disobeying tax laws, deliberately or accidentally (as he says, there is "no compassion in a crocodile brain")
• cautionary tale about citizens who don't pay the taxes they should, some of them due to reasons we can be sympathetic to, and others who are just plain cheats - he has met all types
• how the insider game works in politics and business deals where who you know makes a big difference
• self-promotion and self-congratulation of the tax services of the author
• memories of personal holiday and work adventures, (I'd guess all of which were arranged to legitimately be tax-deductible as business expense though he never utters a word about his own tax affairs)
• how sometimes innocent people get caught up in the CRA idiotically and harshly using its power
• how sometimes very guilty people get away with lots of cheating by hiring a good lawyer

There's no specific tax advice, just the general message to pay your taxes on time .. because the crocodile is lying in wait.

It's quick reading, always light and chatty, flows easily, not technical even when discussing specific (all of them non-viable) tax avoidance schemes. One could imagine all these stories being told over a drink in a bar, the reminiscences and tales of an old raconteur, most of it true but some of it probably embellished. Good entertainment value, a few good laughs along the way. 

[There is even a defense in the book of his law firm's current on-going dispute with the Law Society of Upper Canada, reported in the Toronto Star in 2014, about how to hold client retainer money. He makes a pretty good case. He describes himself a number of times in the book as a fighter, not easily deterred. It certainly seems to be so, as he has announced his candidacy for the Law Society Bench in order to shake it up. If the CRA is a crocodile, DioGuardi might be a leopard, which this site says occasionally eats crocodiles. I don't know if he looks soft and fluffy but he certainly seems to have claws.]