The taxman cometh

I knew it was coming.  It happens every year at this time and, as I’m self-employed, it’s about the worst time of the year.  Time to pay my tax.

Now, I have to say up front that I don’t really begrudge paying my taxes.  Tax is the price we pay for living in society and I don’t have any great issue with either paying it or how it’s spent.  I do well enough and it’s only fair that, through the tax system, I should pay for the facilities I use as well as subsidising services for those less fortunate.

No one is going to negotiate with the Inland Revenue on my behalf, and I don’t want them to.  No one at HMRC is going to cut me a deal and let me off my tax, or reduce it.  I’ll have to pay what I owe, no question and no excuses.  I am not too big to fail; as a small businessman, I’m the perfect size to fail and have no one notice at all.  I think this is one of the reasons why stories about multinational, multi-billion corporations being let off their taxes frustrate me so much - pay tax is your duty as a citizen, individual or corporate.

So it’s not that actual paying of the tax - it’s the fact that, when you’re self-employed, you have to pay tax in two big lumps.  You get paid gross and it sits there in your bank account, just daring you to spend it.  But it’s not all yours - you’re just looking after some of it for the tax man.  And no matter how hard you try not to, it’s very easy to forget that fact.  You look at the number on the bank statement and forget that, in reality, it’s not all there - some of it doesn’t belong to you and, in January, you’re going to have to give some of it back.

When I got the call from my accountant this morning I was, for the first time in a long time, scared.  Properly, pacing around the house, sick to my stomach, not sure what to do scared.  The number was much (twice) bigger than I had expected and I’d committed one of the cardinal sins of the self-employed: I’d forgotten that that money in the bank wasn’t all mine.  Thank goodness, I hadn’t committed the other cardinal can of the self-employed and spent it.  It was just quite a blow.  Particularly as 2011/12 is going to turn out to be a bad year whilst the year I now have to pay tax for - 2010/11 - was actually quite good.

Other people have got it worse: I’m not looking for sympathy.  I’ve got the money, I’ll pay my tax.  But it was a shock and it reminded me that there really is no one else around that I can rely on or lean on.  I don’t mean to lend me the money, or anything like that; it’s just one of those times when being single is particularly difficult, I think.  There’s no one to tell me it’ll be okay, or give me a hug, or take my mind off it.  No one to make me a cup of tea and talk things through with. 

Okay, so maybe I am looking for your sympathy on that front but when you’re single, you have to do all that stuff yourself.  Or you can do what I do, I suppose - brood on it for a while, feel miserable and then complain to you!