Friday, 9 September 2011

Fiscal dilemma

I received a pile of envelopes from HMRC this morning.  I’m not going into details, naturally, but the upshot is that they've concluded that they have been overtaxing me for the past three years, and will be sending me a big cheque (let’s just say four figures, but I’m not telling you which four). I haven’t a clue whether they’re right, or how they know all this, given that I haven’t completed a tax return for at least five years, because they haven’t asked me to.  I’ll be showing it all to my accountant on Monday evening, over the second G&T, and I think I know what he'll say.

So where’s the dilemma, I hear you ask.  Well, clearly I don’t need this money, as I have comfortably survived the last three years without it.  So what shall I do with it?  I could donate it to Warren Buffett, just to ease the pain - but I don’t have his account number.  Or I could donate it to charity – but which one?  I could hand it back to the Treasury, requesting that they leverage it and hand the proceeds over to Mervyn to help out with the next round of QE – but I’m not doing that.  I could go down the shops  - I received a wonderful birthday card a couple of years ago:



Or I could just throw a humungous party.  But that’s a lot of disruption for you all.  Oh dear, I didn’t have this problem yesterday.
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8 comments:

  1. Lo9 September 2011 at 22:55

    Not a drop of sympathy from me!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Richard WalkL10 September 2011 at 08:04

    Throw it in the Thames, a passing long distance swimmer might catch it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Christopher10 September 2011 at 09:28

    When? Where? Is it fancy dress?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Macy10 September 2011 at 20:59

    Invest in pork belly futures.

    Since nobody knows what the hell this means they'll be deeply deeply impressed.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Tim10 September 2011 at 21:23

    Lo - I sympathise with your lack of sympathy.

    Soaring - you can't endorse cheques any more, even soggy ones, and besides, he's probably succumbed to Weil's disease by now, and besides, I can't stand Little Britain, and besides, this sentence contains far too many commas and besideses.

    Christopher - good questions. I am seriously thinking of having my 70th early, just in case.

    Macy - I'll pass your tip on to Billy Ray, Winthorpe and Ophelia.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Z10 September 2011 at 21:53

    Party, please. May I come?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous10 September 2011 at 22:30

    The closest I came to knowing how you feel was the email I received from HMRC stating that I had been over taxed and would receive a refund.

    This was a scam which I just deleted but just for a moment I was taken in.

    ReplyDelete
  8. mig12 September 2011 at 19:17

    I usually get cheques from HMRC to the value of about £1.45. Perhaps if I didn't complete tax returns they'd get bigger?

    I don't mind being disrupted. It sounds like fun.

    ReplyDelete

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