It’s starting
to turn noticeably colder again today- not that it had exactly bothered to warm
up much. As Mike’s only working fairly locally this morning he drops me and our
littlest down to school on his way, and also gives second eldest daughter a
lift to town, as much to her annoyance she has a half hour appointment at
college this morning! He’s working from home this afternoon, and has ‘hundreds’
of pages of printing to do for a training course he’s running tomorrow, so I
think that may well take up a fair amount of my afternoon too.
I have
only one, albeit quite major, aim for this morning and that’s to get my tax return
done. Though, by the time I’ve got back from listening to my Wednesday readers
at the school, and done all the usual washing up and loading the washing machine
etc. the morning is, as normal, a fair way through leaving my quiet
concentration time quite limited…
It’s amazing
where the end of the year can disappear to, especially when you’re either in a
business with seasonal tendencies such as mine has, or else have a young family
involved in all the end of term nativities and concerts that come around then.
I had such good intentions of submitting my tax return before the Christmas rush
kicked in, so that come January it was all done and dusted and I could start
preparing for next year’s. And ok, it’s not quite last minute- I have until
midnight on the 31st, and its only lunchtime on the 28th, but it’s not quite what I had planned.
Two years ago
I was in the same position, having just simply not found the time to go online
and submit it before Christmas, when disaster struck our house on December 29th and all my bags of paperwork were lost in the aftermath of our house fire. Most
of the damage was water related, and somewhere, deep in the hundreds of boxes
we still have for sorting through, I hope that I may come across them yet. But
what use they will be remains to be seen. After several letters to the Inland
Revenue to explain why I couldn’t submit my return for that or the following
year we thought all was ok, until I received an angry letter just before
Christmas demanding payment of fines overdue. Apparently, it seems, all was not
ok, but we had had nothing in between times to say so. Just something else for
us to have to sort out over the coming weeks… I wouldn’t mind quite so much if
Little Dolly Clothes Shop even earned enough to pay any tax on!
Lessons
learned from that year therefore are a) keep your tax return up to date and
submit it as soon as the online facility opens each year, and b) don’t keep
your paperwork in carrier bags in the kitchen/ dining room! Unfortunately life
always has a habit of letting you down, as I said I’m only just about to submit
my return… and all my paperwork is currently in carrier bags in the dining room.
I have at
least made a start on it this year though- back in October just as work was
starting to get busy I spent a day working out all my income and expenses, with
the aim of finishing the job then. I didn’t manage it, but at least it makes
today’s job an awful lot easier than if I was starting from scratch. Maybe I’ve
learnt one thing from past mistakes then! It still takes a good couple of hours
to wade through the hundreds of questions, with all the frightening warnings
making sure that everything you put down is accurate to the best of your
knowledge, or else. By the time I’ve finished I’m almost afraid to admit to my
own name in case I’ve made a mistake with it!
I finish
just in good time as Mike walks in through the door only minutes later,
complete with a bacon and egg bap he’s picked up from somewhere along the way
for my lunch. Before we can settle down to al his printing for tomorrow, he has
a conference call to take part in so I settle to a bit of admin while he’s
busy.
I’m still no
nearer to getting this blog up to date, but at least I publish another day’s
post so I’m keeping up with where I’ve got to. I update the homepage of the
website, so it’s always fresh, and then realise it’s been a long time since I
put anything on my ‘Latest News’ page. More ‘old’ news than ‘latest’, I spend
some time completely revamping the page so it now contains details of my new
seasonal range, and my blog. By now everyone’s returning home for the evening,
and Mike’s finished with his phone call. Looks like it’s time to settle down
nice and cosy with my hubby… and the computer… and the printer…
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