I hate the Inland Revenue
Apr. 12th, 2006 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sulkyblueblogI am a good citizen and pay all my taxes. This isn't a rant about the amount of tax I have to pay, or about what it's spent on. This is a rant about how the whole bloody thing is just a mess.
Up until this year I have just quite happily paid my taxes by PAYE and been 'happy' with just having a chunk of my paycheck disappear without ever really seeing it. Not Happy happy you understand, but content.
Then I decided to do some freelance work while unemployed and being a good little girl dutifully registered as self-employed. This would appear to have been my first mistake.
So there's two issues - income tax and national insurance. They are both done by the inland revenue, but apparently by seperate departments who can't talk to each other.
Firstly, in the wonderful information age when you go to the webpage labeled "Registering for Tax and National Insurance Contributions as a Self Employed Person" you're told the online form is offline (has been for 3 months now) and that you can download the form (I don't have a printer) or phone a number that leads to a ringing phone that is *never* answered.
I eventually printed the form out and managed to make my way through it with only mild trauma. "What is the name of your business?" - well it doesn't have one, it's only me! The "What date did you start work?" also caused me some confusion - is this when I started looking for work, when I first talked to a client, when I did the work, sent the invoice, got paid? Then there's a nice little box that you can tick that says "I plan to earn less than X amount, so I should be exempted from NI payments". Stunning. Ticky ticky, posty posty, all done until next January's tax returns.
Then I get a form through to apply for the NI exemption. This involves exactly the same information as the first form with the replacement of the ticky box with a "How much do you expect to earn?" box. Other traumas on this form included the fact that it was written entirely backwards. Rather than "You've requested exemption, these are the criteria" it was all about who *does* pay NI and that "people holding an exemption certificate do not". It took me 1/2 hour to read through the entirely irrelevent information about class 1 and class 2 contributions. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, but government forms and instructions just seem to bypass the logic centre of my brain.
Also annoying is the fact that the certificate can only be backdated 13 weeks from the application date and they didn't mention this when they say that the original form I filled in could be done up to 3 months after work started. Hence I've automatically incurred NI charges, despite (as far as I can tell) not doing anything wrong.
Then I get 2 letters from the Inland Revenue this morning. One telling me that they've looked at my records and concluded I'll need to fill in a tax return this year. Thankyou, I knew that. Actually I just told *you* I needed to fill one in and why are you bothering me about it 8 months early and trying to sound all clever and psychic about it? The second letter was a demand for National Insurance for the first quarter, must be paid within 20 days of invoice date. Oh, and their phone help line closes at 5pm. So now I have to pay it and then try to claim it back later (provided the exemption is issued).
Why couldn't the whole thing just be done at the end of the year with the income tax people and NI people working together to calculate it in one nice big bill? Yes - I know the various reasons why they don't do this, but this is a rant. You should hear my brother's more extensive rant which also covers such joys as corporation tax and registering for PAYE.
I am so hugely frustrated by the whole thing. People don't move to Monaco to avoid tax, they do it to avoid the paperwork!
On the plus side I've just been offered some more freelance work, so at least the whole thing isn't just over a few hundred pounds.
Up until this year I have just quite happily paid my taxes by PAYE and been 'happy' with just having a chunk of my paycheck disappear without ever really seeing it. Not Happy happy you understand, but content.
Then I decided to do some freelance work while unemployed and being a good little girl dutifully registered as self-employed. This would appear to have been my first mistake.
So there's two issues - income tax and national insurance. They are both done by the inland revenue, but apparently by seperate departments who can't talk to each other.
Firstly, in the wonderful information age when you go to the webpage labeled "Registering for Tax and National Insurance Contributions as a Self Employed Person" you're told the online form is offline (has been for 3 months now) and that you can download the form (I don't have a printer) or phone a number that leads to a ringing phone that is *never* answered.
I eventually printed the form out and managed to make my way through it with only mild trauma. "What is the name of your business?" - well it doesn't have one, it's only me! The "What date did you start work?" also caused me some confusion - is this when I started looking for work, when I first talked to a client, when I did the work, sent the invoice, got paid? Then there's a nice little box that you can tick that says "I plan to earn less than X amount, so I should be exempted from NI payments". Stunning. Ticky ticky, posty posty, all done until next January's tax returns.
Then I get a form through to apply for the NI exemption. This involves exactly the same information as the first form with the replacement of the ticky box with a "How much do you expect to earn?" box. Other traumas on this form included the fact that it was written entirely backwards. Rather than "You've requested exemption, these are the criteria" it was all about who *does* pay NI and that "people holding an exemption certificate do not". It took me 1/2 hour to read through the entirely irrelevent information about class 1 and class 2 contributions. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, but government forms and instructions just seem to bypass the logic centre of my brain.
Also annoying is the fact that the certificate can only be backdated 13 weeks from the application date and they didn't mention this when they say that the original form I filled in could be done up to 3 months after work started. Hence I've automatically incurred NI charges, despite (as far as I can tell) not doing anything wrong.
Then I get 2 letters from the Inland Revenue this morning. One telling me that they've looked at my records and concluded I'll need to fill in a tax return this year. Thankyou, I knew that. Actually I just told *you* I needed to fill one in and why are you bothering me about it 8 months early and trying to sound all clever and psychic about it? The second letter was a demand for National Insurance for the first quarter, must be paid within 20 days of invoice date. Oh, and their phone help line closes at 5pm. So now I have to pay it and then try to claim it back later (provided the exemption is issued).
Why couldn't the whole thing just be done at the end of the year with the income tax people and NI people working together to calculate it in one nice big bill? Yes - I know the various reasons why they don't do this, but this is a rant. You should hear my brother's more extensive rant which also covers such joys as corporation tax and registering for PAYE.
I am so hugely frustrated by the whole thing. People don't move to Monaco to avoid tax, they do it to avoid the paperwork!
On the plus side I've just been offered some more freelance work, so at least the whole thing isn't just over a few hundred pounds.
