LAWS that demand people give a portion of their income to the state to help pay its operating costs are optional, it’s been confirmed.

The range of options available for the payment of tax is proportional to the amount of tax an individual or organisation is able to pay.

They include paying it, pretending to pay it, paying some of it, paying a bit of it, and not paying any of it.

These options, which have always been available but were only recently reported because it wasn’t considered important to tell people, have now been confirmed by an official source.

The taxman said: “Alright, alright, you got me, it’s true. I said it’s true alright? Calm down, chill. Let me explain.

“Tax is and always has been optional. It was never meant to be anything else.

“When we set this whole system up, we realised that demanding the richest people and richest organisations to pay tax would be difficult.

“The richer they are, the more able they are to intimidate us, blackmail us, bribe us, hold our families for ransom, bump off our friends, and kidnap our pets.

“So we decided to make tax optional, as much for our own safety as anything else.

“Taking tax from the poor, on the other hand, is like shooting fish in a barrel, it’s just too damn easy. It’s also fun to watch them squirm. Real fun.

“But the options are still there for everyone. All you have to do to avoid paying tax is get rich. Of course, getting rich is easier when you can avoid paying tax.

“We never said it was a perfect system.”

As the news sunk in, millions of taxpayers began asking how they might be able to avoid paying tax, before realising that because they were employees, tax was deducted automatically from their wages.

“Yeah so the automatic tax deductions for employees work pretty nicely,” the taxman continued.

“Shame we couldn’t introduce a system like that for employers. We were totally going to before the cat went missing.”