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Monday, 20 August 2007 |
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As I've recently finished university and am moving into the world of work I've had to consider tax more often. This summer I've been doing a couple of freelance website designs (see my portfolio) to give me some spending money while I'm out of work and so had to register myself as self employed with the Inland Revenue. Registering was pretty easy and I only had to phone a helpline, however working out what the implications are of being self employed is much more difficult, and this is where the title of this post comes in... How do the government get away with adverts saying "Tax Needn't be Taxing". Surely they should be done under the trade descriptions act or advertising standards! There are not many people - barring accountants who need to know for professional purposes - that fully understand the tax system. I think that after about 3-4 days of reading through articles on the internet I'm not beginning to understand roughly what I have to do for my self employement, that is until I have to fill in the self assement form next year, when I'm sure it'll get much more complicated!
Last Friday I also received a long online form to fill in for my future employer to ensure that they have all my details. Now this only went on to comfuse the matter more as I had to declare beneficiaries and dependents. At no point was it really described what one of these is - and I consider myself to be fairly intelligent. There are the obvious meanings of these words, but as I came to find out they were not actually that true. I also wanted to know if by filling out people as beneficiaries or dependents I was having any impact on tax and legal issues - pretty impossible to find out too! I get private medical insurance with my job and was offered the option of having my girlfriend covered. This was all well and good, although I couldn't get the form to accept her as I had declared her a beneficiary. It turns out that I actually had to make her a dependent - but she not dependent on me I asked HR - but it turns out that's just the way it has to be. It stikes me that somewhere in my education we should have probably been taught more about tax and how things work as its a complex topic and not easy to pick up yourself. Another problem with tax is that its difficult to chat with people about it - as it often reveals deep personal details about yourself (your salary etc). The only people it seems to be easy to talk about tax with is your accountant, but then again they will charge you for this priviledge! So is the tax system as complicated as it is just to create a market for accounts? Who knows! |
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