As this weekend was going to be my only free weekend before Christmas, I knew it couldn't be put off any longer and I had to ...... (eerie howling noise)............('Jaws'-like violin chords)....fill in my tax return.
Until last year I was protected from the rampaging Dragon of Taxreturn by the gallant Knight of PAYE. But as soon as I became self-employed Sir PAYE got bored and wandered off, leaving me alone to do battle with the beast. Well, not quite alone. The much-maligned Squire Iain of Can't-be-Arsed was with me, so he fended off the dragon with a piece of rolled-up newspaper while I screamed hysterically.
It wasn't a pretty fight. It lasted nearly three hours and by the end my gown was crumpled and my wimple was wonky. Squire Iain's vestments were in disarray, and if he had had any hair, it would have been severely tousled. He was also exceedingly grumpy and demanded payment in flagons of tea.
Despite our frustrations, however, we were ultimately victorious, and the beast now lies supine on the dining room table, ready to be dispatched (in the post) tomorrow morning.
Next year I shall employ a champion to fight for me, and whatever price I have to pay (even if I have to pay with my virtue*) it shall not be too great.
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I'm sure that someone who is more analytically and mathematically minded than me (which means pretty much everyone) has no trouble filling in their tax return. Unfortunately I suffer from severe mental retardation in this area. I'm not kidding. That part of my brain just does not work.
To give you some idea of my problem, when I was a child I once had a long and heated argument with a member of my family - I can't remember who it was now - over a 5p coin. They had borrowed 5p from me, and when they gave me my money back they tried to give me two 2p coins and a 1p coin instead, but I wasn't having it. I insisted that they give me back the exact same 5p coin, because although I understood perfectly that two 2ps and one 1p were in theory worth the same, (I'm not actually stupid, you know!) they weren't actually the same, and they had promised they would give me my five pence back. I still think I had a valid point.
I now fully understand Bernard Black's rabbit-in-headlights terror at having to fill in his tax return, and his willingness to do just about anything (including organising the contents of his sock drawer, inviting Jehovah's Witnesses into his home, and getting beaten up by a couple of Millwall fans) to avoid having to fill it in.
*an ancient and long defunct currency, worth approximately 0.0000001 pence
3 comments:
Well done, milady.
Even though I was under the personal protctorate of PAYE, I have long had to do battle with the self-same evil beast whom you have recently vanquished, because Lord Jimny of Yon Gogglebox is a lazy swine who pretendeth not to know the wherewithal of the battle - despite having fought it annually on at least seven occasions.
It's shit and I hate it. I also fail to see how a tax return weekend is a "weekend off"!
Oops,
I think I may have just permanently deleted a genuine comment. If so, I'm sorry Sally!
I've been a bit trigger happy with the old deleting of late - we had a spamming attack on The Write Idea yesterday, and my immediate thought when I got this post was that it was spam too. I thought the link was to some sort of commercial website (it wasn't, it was a link here.) Duh!
I found the post I deleted in my e-mail program, so I'm reposting it.
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Sally said...
Well we've had a result from our accounant. Due to another problem they decided that they would do our personal tax returns for free. Just one problem, they don't have the necessary paperwork to do it. So we've still got to find out which bits they need, where they are etc. and in our house that could take a weekend!
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