It has been a year studded with sparkling statements from some of the government's top brass, but for sheer chutzpah, the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) beats the rest of the brainy bunch with its calendar for the public.

The IRB wall calendar carries the memorable legend "Ke manakah wang cukai pendapatan dibelanjakan (Where does your tax money go?). Its audacious answer makes this calendar a collectible classic.

A huge photograph of Perdana Putra, the PM's imposing office complex in Putrajaya, kicks off 2006. The caption below it informs us in bold letters that tax revenue is spent on "modernising facilities and the administrative system to improve government efficiency".

Illustrating the subsequent months are photographs of a school (March-April), hospital (May-June) and highway (Sept-Oct) to indicate development funding, never mind that highways are exorbitantly tolled. Take, for example, the latest one in the offing - the proposed West Coast Expressway linking Banting and Taiping, where road users are expected to fork over a projected RM42 billion to the concessionaire over the next 38 years.

Gracing the July-Aug page of the calendar are soldiers in jungle fatigues pointing their machine guns at the camera. It's reassuring to know that our troops - supported by expensive military hardware like Skorpion submarines, Sukhoi fighter jets and Super Lynx helicopters - are combat-ready. After all, who knows which tiny neighbouring country may just suddenly decide to attack, eh?

And saving the best for last, the IRB says its expenditure also goes towards helping the local automotive industry - a photograph of a Proton husk closes the year on Nov-Dec. Owners of painfully problematic Protons would be less offended by pretty pictures of cats in the calendar instead, methinks.