The Tax Office Is Holding My Retirement Money "For Me". This Is Why Bitcoin Exists

Parody and satire. The insults are comedy. The facts are real and sourced at the bottom, as of 14 October 2026. Nothing here is financial, legal or tax advice. If you take tax advice from a comedy blog, the tax office deserves you.

Cover: Parliament House, Canberra, at dusk. Looks like a pyramid. Lit like a pyramid. Sits on top of a hill like a pyramid. We're told it isn't a pyramid.

[Walks on. Beer in hand. Phone in the other hand. Reading an email.]

Thank you. Sit down. Not you lot at the back, you're already kneeling.

I got an email yesterday. From the Australian Taxation Office. The subject line, and I'm not making this up, was:

"We're holding your super for you."

For me.

That's the tone. That's the whole tone of the country, right there in six words. We've got your money. You're welcome.

Have a look. I've put my name on it so you believe me.

The actual email. Purple header, friendly font, "Don't get scammed" at the bottom. Lovely touch, that.

"Our records show we are holding superannuation for you. Your employer paid this super into a super fund but it has now been transferred to us."

Transferred to us. Like a parcel. Like my retirement is a parcel that was left with a neighbour, and the neighbour is the government, and the neighbour has opened it.

And then: "You need to take action."

I need to take action. They've got my money and I need to take action. That's a mugger handing you a to-do list.

Super, for the overseas readers

If you're not Australian, let me explain superannuation, because it's the single most Australian thing that exists, and that includes the bloke who wrestles crocodiles.

Most countries, you pay tax your whole life and at the end the state pays you a pension. That's the deal. Australia looked at that deal and said, no, we can do better. You'll pay the tax, one of the highest income tax rates in the developed world, forty-five cents in the dollar at the top plus a two per cent Medicare levy, and then you'll pay for your own retirement as well. On top. Out of the same wages.

There is an age pension, technically. It starts at sixty-seven, it's means-tested, and the entire point of the super system was to make sure you don't qualify for it. So you fund your own retirement, and your reward for doing it properly is that the pension you also paid for goes to someone else.

Here's how it works. Every time you get paid, your employer is required by law to put twelve per cent of your wages into a retirement account. Twelve per cent. On top of your pay, technically, but let's not pretend you'd have been paid less without it. Then you can't touch it until you're sixty. Not fifty-nine. Sixty. If you're born after June 1964, sixty. If you die first, well, that's a saving for everyone.

There's about four point eight trillion dollars in there. Trillion. The entire country's lunch money, locked in a jar, and the jar is run by funds who charge you fees for the privilege of watching it, and the whole arrangement is enforced by the tax office.

And here's the brilliant bit. If your fund loses track of you, because you moved, or changed jobs, or had the audacity to leave the country, it hands your jar to the ATO.

How much have they got? As of August this year, twenty-one point two billion dollars of lost and ATO-held super. Up two point three billion on last year. Just under seven million accounts. The average one is about two and a half grand. That's not a rounding error. That's a sovereign wealth fund made entirely of people who moved house.

The interest rate

Now, you'd think, if the government was looking after twenty-one billion dollars of other people's retirement money, it'd be investing it. Shares. Property. A nice index fund. Something.

No. The ATO pays interest on your held super at CPI. Inflation. That's it. Your money is in the safest investment on Earth: one that is guaranteed to be worth exactly what it was worth when they took it, and not a cent more.

Meanwhile, over the same period, Bitcoin did whatever Bitcoin did, the ASX did whatever the ASX did, and your money sat in Canberra doing a very convincing impression of a brick.

That's not a custodian. That's a hostage situation where the hostage is paid the inflation rate.

And let me stop being cute about it for a second, because I've been doing metaphors for three paragraphs and the metaphors are getting in the way.

This is stealing. Money was taken out of my wages, by law, for me. It is now sitting in a government account, and I can't have it. If I did that to you, took a slice of your pay every week and told you I'd mind it till you're sixty, you'd call the police. You'd be right.

This is coercion. I didn't agree to any of it. Nobody asked. The twelve per cent, the age limit, the fund, the fees, the handover to the tax office when the fund lost my address. Every step was decided for me, and the only choice I was ever given was which company gets to charge me for it.

And this is blackmail. "We're holding your super for you. You need to take action." Do what we say, through the system we control, or you don't see it. That's the whole message. They've dressed it in a purple header and a friendly font, and at the bottom they've written "Don't get scammed," and I honestly can't tell any more if that's a warning or a confession.

"You can transfer it"

To be fair, and I'm nothing if not fair, the email does say you can get it back. You just:

1. Log in to ATO Online through myGov.
2. Select Super, then Manage.
3. Select My profile and update your details.

Three steps. Easy. If you can get into your myGov account. I can't, because I left Australia for good in 2022, and the sign-in code goes to an Australian mobile I no longer have.

And I should say why I left. Not for the weather. I left after the Covid years because I'd had enough. Enough rules. Enough regulations. Enough QR codes on the door of the pub. Enough people, grown adults, nodding along to every new one like it was weather. I packed up, I got on a plane, and I did not look back.

And now, four years later, they've found me. Not to apologise. To tell me they've got my money. The ATO's own advice for people in my position is beautiful: if you can't recover the account, make a new myGov account and link the ATO to it again. Prove who you are, from scratch, to the same people who already have my money and my name in a purple email.

I am an Australian citizen. I have an Australian bank account. I have an Australian passport with an Australian face in it. What I don't have is a six-digit code from a telco in Sydney.

"If you can't use ATO online services, you can contact us for help." On a 13 number. Try dialling a 13 number from Europe. There is an overseas number, on a different page, in a queue that one bloke on the ATO's own forum says never drops under fifteen minutes. International rates. For my money.

And here's the kicker. If I'd been a backpacker on a working holiday visa, I could have had the money paid out when I left. There's a form. It's called the Departing Australia Superannuation Payment. Temporary residents get their super back when they leave. Citizens don't, because citizens are expected to come back.

If you were only visiting, here's your money. If you were born here, here's a link.

So I wrote back. I'll spare you the whole thing, it was two pages and I used the word "demand" four times, but I said what I meant:

I consider this to be tantamount to stealing my retirement savings and blackmailing me through bureaucratic coercion. You are retaining control of my money while placing obstacles in the way of recovering it, despite knowing that I left Australia permanently in 2022 and cannot access my myGov account.

I am an Australian citizen with an Australian bank account. I am not asking for a favour, a handout, or special treatment. I am demanding a workable process to recover money that belongs to me. Do not send me another generic link or automated instruction to use myGov.

I'll let you know what comes back. My money's on a generic link.

The private corporation thing

Right. There's a theory doing the rounds, popular with blokes who own a laminator, that the ATO isn't really the government. It's a private corporation. Proof: it's got an ABN.

I looked it up. It does. 51 824 753 556. Registered in 1999. GST-registered. And here's my favourite bit: one of its trading names is "Australian Taxation Office - Superannuation Group." The tax office has a trading name for the bit that holds your super. A trading name. Like a plumber.

Now, the register also says, in capital letters, "Commonwealth government entity." So the theory is bollocks. Sorry lads. My mate who mows lawns has an ABN as well, and I promise you he is not a shadow government. He can barely run a Hilux.

But I understand why people believe it. Because it behaves like a corporation. It's got my money, it's charging me inflation for the privilege, it's told me to update my details with a company I can't log in to, and it's signed off with "Don't get scammed."

It isn't a private corporation. Which is worse. A private corporation, you could at least leave a one-star review.

The obedient nation

This is where I want to zoom out, because the email is a symptom.

Australia is, and I say this with love, the most obedient country on Earth. We're told it's the best country on Earth. People say that. "Best country in the world, mate." That line comes from a book called The Lucky Country, written in 1964, and the full sentence is: "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck." The bloke meant it as an insult. We put it on tea towels.

Artist's impression. The ley line is alleged. The eye is implied. The queue is real.

Take Parliament House. Walter Burley Griffin's original 1912 plan put a building on top of Capital Hill with a "stepped pyramidal roof", for "popular assembly and festivity rather than deliberation and counsel". A pyramid for parties. They built the parliament on the party hill instead, buried it in the ground, and stuck a giant flagpole on top like a toothpick in a sandwich. The whole city is laid out in triangles. They call it the Parliamentary Triangle. I'm told it's on a ley line. I don't know what a ley line is. Neither did the bloke who told me, but he was very, very sure.

And in front of the pyramid, the people. Kneeling. Waiting to be told what's next.

Because we got a good look at that between 2020 and 2022, didn't we.

Melbourne did six lockdowns, two hundred and sixty-two days, the most locked-down city on the planet. Buenos Aires had the record. Melbourne beat it. Melbourne beat Buenos Aires at being locked indoors, and celebrated. That's the most Australian sentence ever written.

Flinders Street Station, 5 August 2021, the night of lockdown number six. Photo by Neb, CC BY-SA 4.0. Caption is ours.

In Sydney, the Chief Health Officer went on telly and told people not to start conversations. "Whilst it is in human nature to engage in conversation with others, to be friendly, unfortunately this is not the time to do that." Don't talk to your neighbours. Walk the dog, don't talk to Keith. The government of New South Wales, officially, against chatting.

In Ballarat, a pregnant woman was arrested in her living room, in her pyjamas, in front of her kids, and live-streamed it, because she'd made a Facebook event for a protest. Incitement. Five million people watched the video in a day. Two years later the police dropped the charge because it was "not in the public interest to continue". Two years. It was in the public interest to handcuff her. It just wasn't in the public interest to explain why.

And then, October 2021, Victoria announced that every "authorised worker" in the state needed a first dose by the fifteenth of the month and a second by the end of November, or they couldn't come to work. Not just nurses. Retail workers. Personal trainers. Journalists. Faith leaders. Judges. Actors. MPs. Professional footballers. If your boss had no record of your status, the law said he had to treat you as unvaccinated. No jab, no job.

Now, whatever you think about the medicine, and I'm not a doctor, I'm a man with a beer, look at the structure of that sentence. "Do this, or you can't earn a living." In the pub, that's a shakedown. In Spring Street, it was public health.

And the country, by and large, said: "Righto."

That's the national anthem. Not "Advance Australia Fair." "Righto."

Someone asked me the other day why Australians never talk about their convict past.

Because it isn't past, mate. It's still a prison. They just took the chains off and gave everyone a myGov login.

AusJAILia.

Why this is on a crypto website

Because this, all of it, is the pitch. This is the whole thing.

Every Bitcoiner you've ever met has bored you with the same phrase: not your keys, not your coins. It sounds like a bumper sticker. It is a bumper sticker. But stand in front of that email and read it again.

Your money. In someone else's custody. Earning what they decide. Released when they decide. On conditions they decide. Through a login they control. With a "contact us" number that doesn't dial from the country you live in. And a note at the bottom warning you about scammers.

That is what custody looks like when the custodian doesn't need you to like them.

I'm not telling you to put your super in Bitcoin. I'm legally not allowed to tell you to do anything, and more importantly I'd never recommend it to someone who can't be bothered to back up twelve words. Self-custody is a pain in the arse. You can lose it. Nobody sends you a purple email.

But nobody holds it for you, either.

And look, Canberra did get one thing right this year. They were going to tax super balances over three million on gains you hadn't even realised yet. Paper profits. Tax on money you don't have. Then in October 2025 the Treasurer backed off and said realised gains only. So that's the system working. It took the entire finance industry screaming for two years, but it worked. You can push back. The pyramid has a door. It's small, and it's round the back, but it's there.

Good night

So here's where I've landed.

My retirement money is in a building shaped like a pyramid, earning the inflation rate, guarded by a login that needs a phone number I don't have, in a country whose national motto is "Righto."

And the email signed off, "Don't get scammed."

Mate. I'm trying.

I left because of the rules and the people who loved them. I'd started to wonder, lately, whether I'd been too hard on the place. Whether it had calmed down. Whether I could go back for a summer.

Then this landed in my inbox. "We're holding your super for you."

Thank you, ATO. Genuinely. I needed the reminder. Never going back.

Good night. Hug your family. Back up your seed phrase. And if you've got an Australian phone number, log in to myGov and check for ATO-held super, because there's twenty-one billion dollars in there and some of it's yours.

[Leaves. Takes the beer. Forwards the email to ReportScams@ato.gov.au, just to see what happens.]

Sources

The facts, as of 14 October 2026. The jokes are ours.

1. The email: a genuine ATO "We're holding your super for you" notice received 13 October 2026, reproduced above with the recipient's name changed. Why funds hand balances to the ATO and how the myGov transfer works: Aware Super, ATO-held super; ATO, lost super via myGov. Locked out of myGov, make a new account and relink: ATO, when you can't sign in to myGov. The fifteen-minute overseas queue: ATO Community.
2. Lost and ATO-held super: $21.2 billion, up $2.3 billion since 2025: ATO super funds newsroom, 19 Aug 2026. $18.9 billion across just under 7.3 million accounts at 30 June 2025: ATO, 29 Oct 2025. Average unclaimed amount about $2,590: Treasury media release, 29 Oct 2025.
3. Interest on ATO-held super paid at CPI, policy from 1 July 2013: Treasury media release; ASFA; Aware Super explainer.
4. Top marginal income tax rate 45 per cent above $190,000 plus the 2 per cent Medicare levy: ATO, individual income tax rates. Age Pension from 67, means-tested on income and assets: Services Australia, Age Pension. Super guarantee 12 per cent from 1 July 2025; preservation age 60 for anyone born after 30 June 1964: Canstar; Wikipedia, Superannuation in Australia. Total system assets $4,767.2 billion at June 2026: APRA quarterly superannuation statistics.
5. Departing Australia Superannuation Payment is for former temporary residents only; citizens and permanent residents who leave for good wait for preservation age: ATO, DASP; Colonial First State, leaving Australia.
6. ATO's ABN 51 824 753 556, entity type "Commonwealth government entity", trading name "Australian Taxation Office - Superannuation Group": ABN Lookup; the number is also Wikipedia's worked example of ABN validation.
7. "A lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck": Donald Horne, The Lucky Country (1964), opening of the final chapter: Wikipedia.
8. Griffin's 1912 plan, the "stepped pyramidal roofed structure" on Capital Hill for "popular assembly and festivity rather than deliberation and counsel", the Parliamentary Triangle: Parliament of Australia, Papers on Parliament 55; Australian Institute of Architects register entry.
9. Melbourne's six lockdowns and 262 days, the world's longest: Al Jazeera, 22 Oct 2021.
10. NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant, "don't start up a conversation", July 2021: The Western Journal, citing The Wall Street Journal; "don't talk to your neighbours": Pedestrian.tv live blog.
11. Zoe Buhler: arrested at home in Miners Rest on 2 September 2020 over a Facebook protest post, live-streamed, viewed at least 5 million times in 24 hours: The New Daily; charge withdrawn 30 August 2022, police saying it was "not in the public interest to continue": The Courier, Ballarat; Victorian Hansard, 31 Aug 2022.
12. Victoria's authorised-worker vaccine mandate announced 1 October 2021, first dose by 15 October, fully vaccinated by 26 November, covering retail, personal trainers, MPs, journalists, faith leaders, judges, police, lawyers, actors and professional sportspeople; employers to treat unknown status as unvaccinated: Lander & Rogers; K&L Gates; Russell Kennedy.
13. Division 296: original design taxed unrealised gains on balances over $3 million; on 13 October 2025 the Treasurer dropped unrealised gains, moved to realised earnings only with $3 million and $10 million thresholds from 1 July 2026: Sladen Legal; King & Wood Mallesons.
14. Cover photo: Parliament House at dusk, by Thennicke, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cartoon is ours. Captions are ours.

This is parody, satire and commentary on matters of public record, written for laughs. It is not financial, legal or tax advice, not a suggestion to move your super anywhere, and not a suggestion to write to the tax office in capital letters. Got a government that deserves a loving roast? Hit "Share your experience" and pick the 🤡 Crypto Comedy category. Swearing optional, receipts mandatory.