A Red Letter Day

This morning I got the first automatically generated communication in a long time, maybe the first ever, that I greeted with joy and astonishment.

It came from those fine (if slowly moving) people at the HMRC telling me that unless my circumstances change they will not be requiring me to send them any more tax returns.

It’s only because I’ve somehow gotten so old that I didn’t jump for joy and roll about on the floor in ecstasy. Let the thought stand for the deeds.

Since I first started trying (and then eventually failing) to make a living as an actor (which would have been in the autumn of 1977 IIRC) I have been obliged once a year to dig out my old bank statements, find all the invoices and pay slips from my acting jobs, tote it all up, deduct any valid expenses (1), inform the Inland Revenue (as it was then) and finally pay them any profits above my annual untaxed allowance. This very rarely happened.

Not never. There was one year of touring in ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD which meant I was earning actual regular money. If the temporary employment I was sometimes forced into had used up my annual allowance then a good film or commercial job could leave me owing something which I would then have to struggle to find.

The only time I felt they treated me unfairly was when I declared to them some agency temp work that had (for some reason) not had tax taken from it. “Will I owe you anything,” I asked. “We’ll get back to you about that,” they said.

Years passed. The money I had put aside got spent. More years passed and I thought no more of it. But apparantly that file was sitting at the back of someone’s filing cabinet at another tax office where it had been sent for a decision. Pointless internal reorganisation of the Inland Revenue probably happened during this period too: politicians like to reorganise things to justify their existence.

And then just short of the seven years passing that would have meant they couldn’t have dunned me for it they sent me a bill for several hundred pounds (which I didn’t have) and when I went in to local tax office frothing at the mouth and demanding to know just what the hell they thought they were playing at the nice young lady behind the desk smiled and said: “Oh, yes. Remember that load of income you reported? We finally got that sorted out!” She was so pleased and bubbly I couldn’t even shout.

I can’t remember how I paid it. I think it was the entire receipts for another acting job I had rather been hoping to spend on myself. I do know two good friends of mine offered to help me out and though it didn’t come to that I remain grateful to this day.

That was the biggest shock I got out of them but there was an annual moment of tension when I had to do a task that strained the limits of my arithmetical talents and required me, it seemed every year, to try to understand again the peculiar English of people who write the instructions on tax forms. They did not seem to mean the same things as me for many common words and could not for the life of them express anything without jargon.

I never employed an accountant: they charge money for their services and though those fees would have been tax deductable in turn I never made enough of a profit to justify dumping the work on them. I would still have to keep the records and worry about having missed anything and only the oppressive consciousness that I really didn’t have any mastery in this area of expertise would have been lifted a little.

That decision did lead to long waits on the phone trying to get through to a human being to ask what must have seemed like very simple questions to them (“Which box do I enter this thing in?” was the level of it) and this was not good for my temper.

Years passed. Things changed. My acting career dwindled into a few small jobs and the annual letters from the BBC and Equity Collecting Service about repeat fees from my glory days (mostly the HITCH-HIKERS GUIDE) which every year were well below the value at which you had give detailed accounts for a self-employed business even if you included (in later years) the profits from the IMPROVISED RADIO THEATRE WITH DICE tip jar. (2)

I retired from my last Civil Service (nearly fifteen years ago now) so that was one less worry and a small pension to supplement the state pension when it finally came. The Inland Revenue became HMRC (not without weeping and gnashing of teeth). I started filling the forms on line and not on paper. Eons passed.

The money I inherited from my mother and my Aunt Kath was in the hands of some nice money management people (recommended by my brother) and I still had to admit to small amounts of capital gains and income from abroad though. This dwindled over the years and this last year they finally reported that all my investments were ‘within the envelope’ of their ISA and therefore they didn’t have to send me a tax summary every year and I didn’t have to send anything about it to HMRC.

So this last week I finally got around to doing my tax returns for the year ending 5th April 2024. I ended up owing them five quid even more than had already been deducted.

And this morning I get the email saying that unless my circumstances change (3) that would be the last tax return they would be needing from me. End of an era. Felt like end of an eon. I note that the email was dated 1st October so perhaps some unknown computer system (or God knows perhaps even a real human being) had already decided that I was to be released from these decades of bondage and was just waiting for me to do the final return before releasing me.

I will probably continue to collect up receipts, statements and what have you as they arrive. They will go into the box marked ‘Current Finance’ and each year I shall take out one of the boxes I keep in my bedroom marked ‘Tax Year ending April 20XX’, the one that is more than seven years old (because like HMRC I know I have seven years before it all becomes irrelevant) and shred the contents, putting the last year’s paperwork in the now empty box and changing the label on the outside. I don’t know how long I shall continue to do this before it all seems too pointless. As long as I can remember I suspect.

I may have bought my last shredder though. I was always rather too heavy handed with them and tended to break them by shovelling too many sheets of paper through them at once. Maybe I can be more patient with them in future. Since my bank statements have gone online there’s less to worry about there.

So there it goes. Just one more relationship I used to have (no, not a happy one but there’s a certain comradeship in shared misery) which has faded away with time. I should feel joyous! I should buy some wine and toast my liberation but the weather outside is looking dour and I shall probably pour myself the last of the brandy I got for last Christmas instead. With supper, not right now.

I wonder if I shall find something useful to do with the leisure time and money I won’t be spending on keeping the taxman happy. I may or may not find life less stressful: we shall have to see.

(1) Which required me to keep a record of

All journeys for business purposes including going up to London for auditions

All purchases of make up and costume

My Equity Subscriptions

My agent’s fees…

And I think that was all actually. There were other things I’m sure but they never applied to me.

(2) Which I spend on games and books, just the way I promise on the podcast.

(3) Just a moment while I go and do the Lotto for today… Back again.