Life This morning I filled in my first tax return. Ever. When I worked for the Liverpool Biennial towards the end of last year I had to register as self employed and so here I was this morning trying to work out how a standardized form applied to me. Even ringing the help line didn't help. Everything is set up with expectation that I had my own business with a name and address, an annual profit and probably employees with staplers and coffee breaks.
I was clearly not but neither the online or paper form would accept that. The word from the call centre advisor was essentially that I should fill it in as best you can which I did but it still didn't seem entirely satisfactory and so when I reached the end and also taken into account the money I received on benefit and after calculations it said that I didn't owe anything, I simply couldn't believe it.
I'm not a very trusting person. Well, actually I like to think I am with people, but always expect procedures to be more complicated than they probably are, automatically set up to trip me up and first opportunity. A similar thing's happening at work, where I'm learning about and following rules and I just expect there to more to them, more things that can go wrong.
I don't know what happens now that I've submitted the return, but I've a sneaky suspicion I'll be getting a letter from them at some point because it's not all there or they don't understand. Which wouldn't be too much of a shock because lately, sometimes, I'm not sure that I really am either. Isn't paranoia brilliant?
1 comment:
I know what you mean - it's taken a few years of tax returns for me to get the hang of them.
I think you'll be okay though. As you say, the self-employed pages are geared more to people with a business, but that should just make it easier for you to fill in as you'll skip past the expenses section, won't have a balance sheet to enter, and given that you were only working there for a few weeks then it's not too surprising that it didn't think you owed anything from it.
You've got it all sorted and out of the way nice and early though - I'm sure it'll be next January before I get round to filing mine...
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