Tax, returned

Back in May I started the process of claiming back excess tax paid in the last financial year. A few weeks later I got a form in the post, one of those small forms asking you to detail you employment over the year detailing weekly income and explaining any gaps. Since my weekly income changed every week, and since I tend to see a red mist whenever confronted by this kind of restrictive, intrusive, categorising form, I took them to their word and used four separate sheets of paper to detail, by hand (don’t have a printer right now) every week from leaving the farm in August 2003 to April 2004. I crammed this into the tiny A6 envelope and waited.

As soon as I’d posted it I realised I’d screwed up. Confronted with a wadge of badly scrawled info-dump the human-being at the tax office would, quite rightly, shove it to the bottom of the pile and when they did finally get to it, probably on a Friday afternoon after a bad week, would not look on it with a positive light. I’d been a tosser and deserved to be treated as I would treat a tosser.

But still I waited, occasionally thinking about popping down to the tax office to investigate but never getting around to it. The potential sum was quite high and I’d never done this before so was interested to see how it would turn out. This morning an official looking envelope was on the doormat, A5 in size so not just a statement or bill, it actually contained something. For the fourth or fifth time this year (I don’t get much post to be honest) I thought it might be my tax return.

It was. And for the full amount. All the income tax I paid last year has come back to me just as the last couple of lean months agency wise are starting to adversely affect my bank balance. Yay!