I have spent much of today endeavouring once again to organise the complicated relationship subsisting between myself and the Inland Revenue.
This is because although possibly for the first time in my entire book-keeping career I am up to date with my tax returns and declarations thereof, I know perfectly well that roughly this time next year we are going to be hit with a tax bill which will make my eyes water and I would like to have as much advance notice of its potential size and devastating impact as possible, in order to calculate whether it would be a better economic idea to pay it or emigrate.
Saving up to pay a tax bill is a dreadfully dull thing to do, and my whole soul is in rebellion against the idea.
I am usually jolly good at saving up. I have got the skeleton money box for nice things, and the special bauble box for Christmas, and the Holiday Fund, and whenever we get a fifty pound note we are not allowed to spend it but must invest it in our stocks and shares for dark dreadful days. However, the thought of saving money up all year, watching it grow and do nicely and then just giving it all to the Inland Revenue without even an argument makes me feel downhearted: because there will be absolutely nothing to show for it except the NHS and Number One Daughter’s wages.
I approve very much of tax in principle. I think it is an absolutely amazing thing that we all do our best to club together for things that matter to everybody, and it really makes me very proud to be human and part of such a thoughtfully organised society. Also I think that if I had a broken leg or earache or similar, and needed the NHS I would be jolly relieved that we all look after one another so well.
However, no matter how much I remind myself about these lovely things the thought that I have got to spend the next year putting all my spare money into a saving-up-for-tax-fund is very dull indeed. It is not nearly as exciting as saving up for a holiday, or for Christmas adventures, or for some of the new books that I didn’t decide I wanted in enough time for last Christmas.
Having made my complaint now I must add that I do not at all think that I want the sort of occupation where you have got to give the Inland Revenue money all the time, and where somebody else does all the sums and just gives you the change, instead of having everything you have earned in your own pocket to sort it all out for yourself.
I think this is probably quite soul destroying. I have always got the choice whether to save tax money out of the taxi takings every day, or spend it and worry about it later. I can hope for a miracle or live in dread of a reckoning, and hence my life is completely my own, and with all its cognac-at-three-in-the-morning terror moments, and I would not have it any differently.
Mark has a very favourite Homer Simpson quote which I think is probably absolutely right: that “any day when you haven’t had your comeuppance yet is a good day.”
I have got until next year to save up for my comeuppance, or emigrate, which ever turns out to be the most appealing idea. After I had got bored with counting on my fingers, I gave up and went down to the kitchen to make hot sustenance for Mark’s return. Mark has spent the entire day at the farm taking the gearbox out of his taxi, and comes home cold and starving when he has been doing things like that at midwinter: so I made an enormous pie out of a leftover ham joint, and some eggs and cream and potatoes and all the vegetables that had somehow avoided being dished up over Christmas.
I listened to the radio whilst I cooked, and the person on the afternoon science programme warned us all that we are about to have some very cold weather indeed for a few weeks, so we had better get some logs in and pack Oliver some thermal vests in his luggage. Obviously they didn’t say the last bit on the radio, that was my idea. I like the idea of some cold weather as long as I am indoors next to the fire, it will be better than the monsoon and the black mould.
I told Mark about the tax and the weather whilst he was eating the pie later, and he thought that the balance of the two pointed towards emigration as a perfect solution, preferably to somewhere with cheap wine and Vitamin D
Of course we won’t emigrate really.
So it will have to be saving up.
