I have become creative again.
I had a gloomy day yesterday because of being too disabled to go for a long walk, and not having any piece of creative writing with which to sustain myself through the long and dismal hours of housework.
Today I realised, to my excitement, that there was, in fact, a piece of creative writing awaiting my attention. One which in fact involved some substantial exercise of my imagination, consideration, and plot-construction abilities.
Today I have been doing our tax return.
It was a Braided Narrative and a half, I can tell you.
The problem with tax returns is that quite simply, I can’t get our figures to add up. Long-established readers of these pages might recall one dismal year when I actually informed the Inland Revenue that we had earned ninety thousand pounds more than we actually had done. I do not know how I managed to mess that up.
The difficulty that I have is that we are operating on the very fringes of established society, and the tax inspector does not like that. Today I was faced with several insoluble difficulties. One of the most taxing, of course there was a pun intended, was one you might recollect. We have, as you know, recently forked out two and a half grand for taxi engines and other similar oily bits. We could not afford to purchase these in shiny new boxes from the Main Dealerships, perish the thought, I don’t think Mark has ever been inside one of these hallowed premises in his entire life. We couldn’t afford the entrance fee, never mind to purchase anything. They charge three hundred quid just for the shiny cardboard box.
Instead our vital repair bits were purchased from anonymous Asian chappies on the back streets of places like Rotherham, extricated from the smoking ruins of other people’s driving misfortunes. The engines were exactly what we needed, without them we would not have been able to carry on working. However unsurprisingly, none of the vendors were prepared to throw anything as mundane as a receipt into the transaction. They preferred to be paid with a handful of tenners, which they stuffed into their back pockets, presumably to stay there, at least until their wives extracted them later.
I do not have a problem with this, they will probably spend it far more wisely than our beloved leaders, but it leaves me with some head-scratching to do.
When you are explaining to the tax office what you think you owe them, you tell them what you have earned and then take away what you have spent. You pay tax on what is left. I imagine that you know this, but you would be surprised how many people have never worked it out, a lot of taxi drivers amongst them.
If I don’t have a receipt for something, I can’t show that I have bought it, and the Inland Revenue will go Aha! and I will be in trouble.
I could write my own receipt, I suppose, although this would be fraud, even if it was true, because of course I don’t actually know any of the names, addresses, dates of birth or inside leg measurements of any of the engine-dispensers. Reasonably enough, the Inland Revenue likes to see this sort of stuff to prove you are not making it up, which in this case I would be.
I could pretend that we didn’t make the money in the first place, but then we have used too much fuel for the money we have earned, and the Inland Revenue will go Aha! all over again.
I puzzled and puzzled over this one.
Suddenly, I had one of those Lightbulb Moments. I mean a properly halogen Lightbulb Moment, none of your LED rubbish.
We did not purchase the bits of engine until the end of April. The tax year does not carry on into April but goes out, lamb-like, at the end of March.
The engine, the oily bits, the whole tax-puzzling problem, is not for now but for next year. I don’t need to worry about it at all for twelve whole months. I might even be dead by then and it won’t matter at all.
I shelved it all with a happy sigh of relief.
This time next year is absolutely nothing to worry about.
It can be my legacy for poor misfortunate Future Me.
