Taxed out of pocket

For years I never thought about income tax. It came off my salary, codes were issued, things remained much the same. I retired, new codes were issued, I still didn't have to think about it. Until I began working in an intermittent, self-employed fashion, and everything seemed to unravel. And strangely enough, I'm not actually referring to the tedious business of filling in an online tax return - though goodness knows it's enough to put me off working any more. But the very act of sending in a couple of returns seems to have done something to upset the tax machine (I believe they use computers to check things nowadays. That figures.)

In September I received two tax codes - apparently on the same SSPA pension. One was the usual code, one was unfamiliar. I phoned to enquire. It transpired that this was in fact an error; someone (something?) had got it into its head that I had two pensions and they were determined to tax the second to within an inch of its worth. They would send me another, correct code and all would be well.

Except that it isn't. Well, I mean. Because by the time they made this discovery - or I made it for them - it was only two days before the deduction was made from my pension, and it was too late to change it. The result was that my latest pension payment is some £600 less than it should be. Today I rang again, just to have the satisfaction of telling someone I was pissed off at this. The scenario I painted was that of the poor pensioner, with Christmas coming ... you get the picture. Were they maybe running a profitable enterprise on the side and calling it a mistake? I ended my litany of complaint with a question. "Don't you think that's iniquitous?" I asked. Long silence. I tried again. "Don't you think that's really bad?" Well yes, allowed the woman at the other end, it was not good but there was nothing she personally could do about it. The money would eventually be repaid, but I would have to do without it in the meantime.

Which of course I knew. I told her it would be really good to contact someone who could do something about it. Like a wee recompense?  She didn't know if that would be possible, but she gave me an address. She had no name to give me, as there was no single person who would deal with my case. I observed that this was a pity, as it was always good to have someone to nag by name, and that perhaps a bit of undivided attention on individual cases would avoid some of the errors that abound. She didn't reply.

The call was, of course, recorded for control purposes. The wifie wouldn't be likely to say anything too definite. But I may pursue that address, just for the hell of it. You never know ...

Being fair to the taxman?

I completed my online tax return the other day. It reduced me to weeping and gnashing of teeth, and it took me all morning and made my lunch late. That's bad. All the years I was employed as a teacher, I only did perhaps a couple of returns before they brought in PAYE, so this assault upon me as a result of doing the self-employed thing came as a cruel awakening.

Part of the cruelty comes in the letter the tax people send you - the ones that tell you to get it done by October if you're filing a paper return, but allow you to the New Year for the online stuff. It arrives in May.  The language is especially minatory, despite their attempts to lighten up by introducing the contractions of an informal register. So: This notice requires you, by law, to send us a tax return ... but you have till three months after the date of this notice if that's earlier. I would disapprove of that, I think, were I to attack it in a professional capacity ... but I digress. The greatest threat is yet to come.

If you don't file (that wee informal touch again) by the deadlines, you will have to pay penalties and interest as follows.
• One day late and you will be charged an initial penalty of £100 (even if you have no tax to pay or you have already paid all the tax you owe).
• Three months late and you will be charged an automatic daily penalty of £10 per day, up to a maximum of £900.
• Six months late and you will be charged further penalties, which are the greater of 5% of tax due or £300.
• Twelve months late and you will be charged yet more penalties, which are the greater of 5% of tax due or £300. In particularly serious cases you face a higher penalty of up to 100% of the tax due.

So why am I making all this fuss? (It is the law, after all). Two reasons. The first is that my fellow-teachers and others in PAYE schemes, who never have to deal with their own taxes, might be interested to see what they're missing out on. But secondly, and far more importantly, is the lack of efficiency of the Tax Office.

Mr B got a letter on 9th March, in which HM Revenue and Customs told him that he had underpaid tax. Apparently the SPPA had given them the wrong tax code, and they intended simply to take the money. Several phone calls and letters later, they are still "dealing with it". The most recent phone call was prompted, I may add, by the sight of the letter I had with all these penalties listed for late submission.

Perhaps I am merely being naive. Perhaps in fact HM Revenue and Customs find their tax sums as difficult to deal with as I do. Perhaps we ought to cut them a bit of slack and not expect them to be as efficient as we're expected to be.

But I find myself incapable of such magnanimity. And the worse of it is that I shall now be hounded to my grave by these people, whether I ever work again or not. I'll get back to you on this. As the tax office folk say on the phone - bear with me.

Submission

Followers on Twitter will know that I've just spent a foul morning (weather, state of mind and activity all qualify) doing my online Tax Return. And followers of my life to date will realise that the last time I'd to fill in a tax return is lost in the mists of history - probably before I returned to work after giving birth to two sons to whom tax returns are probably as familiar as writing poetry is to me. But poetry they are not.

As an accountant friend pointed out on Facebook, my travails are why people employ accountants. It's just that I can't bring myself to think that my simple one-off job last year merited such an extravagance - nor to believe that I can be as stupid as I currently feel. Why, after all, would someone ever employ a thicko who couldn't fill in a tax return?

And of course, it's not really that at all. It's lack of familiarity with the jargon. The professional me knows that jargon's often at the heart of most incomprehension. When I returned to teaching in the early '80s, they'd introduced Standard Grade. I became instantly depressed at my first DM by talk about GRC and folios, about summative and formative assessment. Apparently I'd been accustomed to normative assessment and never known it. Obviously I had much to learn.

It's the same with money matters. Once you get the handle on what the tax people call things, it becomes slightly more accessible; you then have to realise what their forms won't tolerate (use the 'return' key at your peril and forget your antiquated notation that puts commas to indicate thousands). But don't ever think that help is only a phonecall away. Once you've littered your screen with help notes and pdf files, you can try phoning, and eventually, after several terse 'thanks for waiting's and reruns of a dire jingle, you will get a person to speak kindly to you and return re-invigorated to your screen only to find that the session has closed down because you spent too long away from it. And then, of course, you get the crash of the site when you're 75% finished and when you get back in you have to retrace your steps through several screens in a panic lest you have to do any more sums - or even look up more bits of paper.

Ok, I admit it. I'm not interested in money and keeping track of bits of paper. My files are stuffed to overflowing with statements I never look at. I am interested in poetry and literature and language and the problems of religious faith - and these don't seem to equip me for life in the financial world at all. But when I pop my clogs - it's all there, kids: you'll just have to look for it.