News Archive

Two final year undergraduates have made paying tax seem like fun.

Jared Hill and Antoni Buccini won a national student competition to create a video for the Australian Taxation Office, to help engage young Australians and explain to them how taxation and superannuation systems support our way of life.

The young men, who will both have completed double degrees by the time you read this, were in a class of Dr Fang Liu , Associate Professor in Marketing in the Business School. She thought the project would be right up their alley as both of them are interested in film and video.

“It is the first time anybody from UWA has entered this competition and I am really proud of their achievement,” Dr Liu said.

Sam’s Excellent Adventure features Antoni as Sam, with Jared behind the camera.

“We spent weeks coming up with a good idea, then wrote it together,” said Jared, who studied Arts (majoring in Italian) and Business (majoring in marketing and entrepreneurship). “We’re close friends and spent an exchange year in Italy together, so we know how each other thinks – we’re a good team.”

Antoni (also majoring in Italian, with Business majors in marketing and management) said he and Jared would both love to work in the film industry but decided to “get an education first”.

Their four-minute video, now on YouTube , projects into the future of ‘Sam’s’ life, as a student, a graduate, a failed businessman (and later a successful one), a tree-hugger, a parent, an employee and a retiree, with the Government supporting his unemployment, medical treatment, children’s education and aged pension. It is a very entertaining look at how our taxes sustain Australians’ enviable lifestyle.

The friends shot the video over four days, with virtually no budget. “We went to op shops for our props and filmed in our homes and in public parks,” Jared said.

They won $2,500 worth of vouchers for Coles Myer which, as astute business operators, they “have liquidated” to provide cash for their next endeavour.

Sam’s Excellent Adventure can be seen at ATO on YouTube

Published in UWA News , 26 November 2012