No one speak to me...
...I am filling in my tax form. This is one of the really irritating things about being self-employed. Each time I do it I have to face up to the fact that I can't do paperwork... and also, these days, that I am a kept woman.
I thought you were keeping a ledger, says Hodmandod Senior (I know he doesn't mean to sound smug, but he does), so then I have to confess that somehow I stopped doing this approximately two weeks after I'd started - in the general turmoil of getting things done.
Anyway, I have just unearthed a pile of bills from the drawer of my desk (which is where I stuff bits of paper that seem like they might be important), pulled out a couple of files from my filing cabinet (just in case one or two things happened to land there in one of my rare fits of opening boring-looking envelopes), unloaded the overloaded in-tray and summoned up the on-line bank account and the (unsorted) in-box of my email.
Then, having amassed this mass of real and virtual paper, I enter Her Majesty's Inland Revenue 'portal' (ah such an evocative term for something so very dull) and click through the pages with mounting consternation. What exactly is a tax loss, I wonder. Does it mean overpaid or underpaid tax or the state of my (hypothetical) ledger sheet? In the end I make a guess and hope for the best...
I thought you were keeping a ledger, says Hodmandod Senior (I know he doesn't mean to sound smug, but he does), so then I have to confess that somehow I stopped doing this approximately two weeks after I'd started - in the general turmoil of getting things done.
Anyway, I have just unearthed a pile of bills from the drawer of my desk (which is where I stuff bits of paper that seem like they might be important), pulled out a couple of files from my filing cabinet (just in case one or two things happened to land there in one of my rare fits of opening boring-looking envelopes), unloaded the overloaded in-tray and summoned up the on-line bank account and the (unsorted) in-box of my email.
Then, having amassed this mass of real and virtual paper, I enter Her Majesty's Inland Revenue 'portal' (ah such an evocative term for something so very dull) and click through the pages with mounting consternation. What exactly is a tax loss, I wonder. Does it mean overpaid or underpaid tax or the state of my (hypothetical) ledger sheet? In the end I make a guess and hope for the best...
Labels: Inland Revenue, self-employment, Tax forms
posted by Clare Dudman at 1:23 pm
5 Comments:
When you title a post "No one speak to me ...," then that's exactly what I want to do - speak to you.
While I'm fairly good with paperwork & keeping things organized, I can get very frustrated with government forms & regulations. Having difficulty with our state health care. Seems the department doesn't ever want to take the postal service into account when sending out missives that must be attended to three days before they are received. Gah!
Good luck!
There are times when it's simply better to call in an accountant (these times are very rarely at dinner parties).
Ah, if only I could afford one, Stu!
Yes, Mary, same thing happens over here. It seems to take a good few weeks for a letter to find its way out of some government buildings.
Self-employment seems to be discouraged wherever it occurs, doesn't it? In the US, 20 years of form 'SE' finally sold me on... getting an outside job.
Do you ever wonder if the impetus of governmental types is not the creation of new ideas of employment or self-sufficiency, but rather the creation of plug-in positions for the ever-less-educated masses?
I'm in that mood right now, being busy not only replumbing and setting up remodeling my bathroom, but documenting same in digital photos, and it's going to ring out at about US $500.
And it will look good.
Yes, I hadn't thought of it that way, JL, but I think you're right.
Your bathroom project sounds like a fine thing - very satisfying to know it's your own work. I used to do a lot of that with my husband but seem to have been stuck in this writing and researching loop for the last few years. I think I need to escape - somehow.
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