I've just filled in my tax return and quailed at how much they want. In advance!
No wonder small businesses collapse in their first year here. We have to pay tax for next year as well as this year, even though we don't yet know how much we'll make next year.
That's why everyone who fills out a tax return leaves it until the last week of January. The tax has to be paid on the 31st of this month and the next year's tax is based on this year's earnings.
You can reduce your tax on account but if you reduce it too much you'll get fined. Therefore everyone is filling in tax forms this week because it's not possible to predict income any earlier than this. It's risky even now!
Soon it'll be over and I can get back to normal, but January is, and always will be, a bad time to talk to any UK self-employed business.
Our government really don't like us very much.
7 comments:
It's really bad when it costs more to pay someone to figure & file your taxes than you're going to get back in refund.
Taxing people on what they think they'll make is positively bonkers! What if you're laid off, or change careers, or are disabled for a time? Why do the citizens put up with this sort of garbage?
They say there are only two things certain in life: death and taxes. Well, if this article is correct, it's only taxes that are certain.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583914,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g2:r3:c0.264847:b30059696:z0
SW - I don't pay an accountant to do it. My income/expenditure is deliberately simple so I can cope with it.
JP - the tax office isn't interested in what might happen, only in getting the money now.
It means the non-recession-years tax has already been collected and spent, and all they'll get this year is the recession-year tax which will be much lower from all sources.
I suppose they thought it was a good idea at the time.
Regina - We had that story in the papers here too. He was lucky the mortician was so observant!
There was a case of live burial nearby, but it was a century ago. A graverobber found the woman alive when he opened her coffin to steal her jewellery.
I'll bet it cured him of his criminal ways!
I suspect, for the next twenty years, it made half the women in the county insist on being buried with their jewels.
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