Perhaps declaring my counter as a global is my problem. My code is quite similar to the example you gave, but mine is perhaps even more simple/naive. Here is my code

use strict;
use warnings;

package MUCParser;
use base "HTML::Parser";

my $num_of_tags;
sub start
{
   $tag_count+=1;
}
sub num_of_tags 
{
    return $tag_count;
};
[download]

I had assumed that declaring my tag_counter like that still meant that each instance had that. A quick google (now that I realise my problem) shows that the proper way to store my variables in the self hash reference. Sound like a better way of doing things? Time to test and see. Thanks heaps.