Tax Return
Posted: Fri 27 October, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness 1 Comment »This week, I got a letter from your friends and mine, the Inland Revenue. Following on from my self-assessment tax return, which I sent off in time for the “we’ll tell you how much tax you owe” deadline at the end of September, and please bear in mind that I’ve been on PAYE (AKA ‘paying the tax decreed by Inland Revenue’) for the entire tax year.
So – the letter arrived, along with fucking reams (I may exaggerate slightly) of paperwork explaining how they’d done their calculations, what tax had been paid, when, why, what it should’ve been, what it might be, what it is, and all sorts of other shit.
At the end of it, they finally tell me the amount that I owe for this year – bearing in mind (again) that I’ve only been doing PAYE this year, so really it should be nothing at all.
But instead it’s… Are you ready for this?… 88p
They’ve spent about 85p on the fucking postage!
They really are a spectacularly incompetent bunch of time wasters. Surely there is a decision point somewhere needed. If tax owed is less than, what, £50 or so, then don’t bother as it’ll cost more than that to process the paperwork and post it out.
Again, I cite my receiving a cheque from the Inland Revenue, which they posted first class, for £0.00. Idiots.