For the last six years
Adam Hart-Davis has been willingly pocketing the Revenue's shilling
in return for popping up on our television and radio stations to
assure us that "tax doesn't need to be taxing." Now it turns out he
thinks the tax system is too complicated, and HMRC have (allegedly)
responded by dropping him.
But if you are careful
and organised, and if your financial affairs are not complicated,
it is still perfectly possible to deal with your own taxes. This
section is designed as a step-by- step guide to doing it
yourself.
The danger with DIY
tax lies in what Donald Rumsfeld called the unknown unknowns - the
things that you don't realise you don't know about. I have a mate
who is a surgeon and who assures me that in a few days he could
teach almost anyone to remove an appendix. But what takes years is
to teach a trainee surgeon to recognise when something is going
wrong and to know what to do to put it right. Fortunately dealing
with your own tax affairs is not usually as urgently life
threatening as DIY surgery. If you begin to feel out of your depth
in the middle of filling in your tax return you can usually afford
to wait a week or two while you take advice.
DIY tax doesn't mean
taking all your papers along to the tax office just before the tax
return deadline and sitting down with a guy on the Revenue enquiry
desk while he helps you fill in your tax form. Yes, he'll probably
do it for you, but he probably won't have the expertise or
understanding of your business to make sure you claim for
everything to which you are entitled, and he certainly won't have
the time to do a careful job or any interest in giving you advice
on reducing your tax bills.
1. Do-it-Yourself
