Outland Revenue

I'm having all sorts of problems with my tax return. Not with the traditional setback of working out how much I should pay, that's relatively simple. Instead I'm struggling to log on to the HMRC website in the first place. It's a long, complicated and boring story and one that I'm confident I'll have resolved before the deadline at the end of the month, but it's frustrating that I have put in a day and got nowhere.

I will be spending at least some of today telephoning automated helplines and getting irritated in the hope that I can get to the bottom of User IDs, Passwords and Activation PINs that don't seem to work.

So while I'm sorting out my taxes again and by way of another distraction, here's a portion of script for a barely relevant scene from the Red Dwarf Series II episode, Better Than Life:



Lister: Smeg! Outland Revenue!

Rimmer: Oh, oh, oh, oh! Outland Revenue!

Lister: 8500!

Rimmer: 8500? That's a lot of tax, isn't it, Listy? How on Titan are you going to pay for that?

Lister: I'm not. It's yours.

Rimmer: What? This is wrong! This is dead wrong!

Lister: Relax, it doesn't matter now. Not gonna catch you now, are they?

Rimmer: What? Just because we're three million years into deep space and the human species is extinct? That means nothing to these people. They'll find us.

"They Are Like Sacrifices To Tribal Gods?"

So asks Leela of taxes in the Doctor Who story, The Sunmakers (below). The Doctor's response very much reflects how I feel now:

"Well, roughly speaking, but paying taxes is more painful."

As with last year, I've just done my tax return. For the last couple of years I've earned so little money acting that I've received a tax rebate in January, because I had paid too much tax in other jobs. It was very convenient to get a rebate in January and in all honesty I got used to it. Not so this time.

In the tax year 2009-2010 I earned a bit more than usual and crucially the temp agency I had worked for did not make any deductions for tax. So there I was at the end of January with no money and having to find £[undisclosed amount] to put into the coffers of Her Majesty's government.

Now £[undisclosed amount] may not sound like much for a year's taxation, but I really hadn't made a lot of money and once I'd paid off some debts from a period of unemployment following the 2008 Dickens debacle, I wasn't exactly rolling in it. I'd hardly been reckless with money and then I found myself in a similar position again.

I have no problem with paying tax. I'm glad that it is spent on the NHS, education, pensions and what little arts funding there is left, but in an age of what seems like remorseless cutback after remorseless cutback, I have my doubts.

George, you'd better spend it wisely.

You owe me that much...

Taxed

Controversially unemployed newsreader and owner of the stiffest upper lip in Britain, Moira Stewart is the current face of tax. She makes it seem so easy perched up there in her greenish ivory tower, but really she's scared. So scared in fact that she hides in the cupboard under the stairs praying that her tax return will do itself.

I've done my tax return now, but why do I always leave it to the last minute?

For those of you with proper jobs who never need to worry about calculating your own tax contributions, every April at the beginning of the new financial year those of us with other fiscal arrangements get a letter reminding us to file a tax return. I then put this letter to one side for safekeeping and promptly lose it. It surfaces sporadically, usually whenever I'm searching for something else, but I never quite have the time, or more crucially, the inclination to do it.

If the accused who defends himself in court has a fool for a client, then is the actor who can't afford an accountant equally foolish? Possibly. I'm registered as self-employed, because I'm an actor and that is certainly scant qualification for running a business. Despite this I recommend that anyone in this industry still register themselves as self-employed.

The first year they will send you the most impenetrable all-purpose form full of questions about your property ownership on the Isle of Man, and the cost of cleaning your ecumenical dog collars. The best way to weather that storm is to get an accountant to do the first year's tax return for you. Equity has a list of those that specialise in services relevent to actors. When I first looked in 2007, I was quoted prices ranging from £150 to £650. No prizes for guessing which I went for. They will know which sections do not apply to you and will provide you with a copy from which you can work out each subsequent year. Then you're on your own.

Since then I have been determined to file my tax return myself and although it's still not something that comes naturally, it's mostly a matter of working out where to put the zeroes.

Today is the deadline for the tax year 2008-09 so if you haven't already, submit your tax return.