Saturday, 7 July 2007

July and Taxes and the online service

At the end of May my debts totalled £18912.57 and at the end of June they totalled £17197.29. Down by £1715.28 which is great but I now see the interest I am paying out and it really hurts, as I have such a small monthly spending allowance. My interest is over £150.00 a month. It is no wonder the banks love to give credit. I pay most of my interest to the bank which has given me the two loans and a credit card.

I have had some other good news this month in that I have gotten back six months worth of charges from Creditexpert (an online credit info company). It's only just over £35.00 but that's better than a slap with a wet fish.

I decide to get online with my Taxes for 06/07 and do my tax return online, something I had done in the past. Got it set up again - the online help service desk staff are very good. But my computer is on dial-up and sooooooo sloooowww... and finally the page would change. It took about an hour to get the self employment tax return done - I didn't have very much to fill in, so had to keep waiting for pages to change. Well it is now done. But I think something has gone wrong somewhere. I had hope in doing my tax returns now, to have lowered what I currently own the taxman. But this doesn't seem to be the case at all.

The Tax Man (and I know that more women work for the inland revenue than men but my guy is THE taxman) had sent me letter outlining my arrears with the revenue, and the balance, after payments I had since made was £3612.45(this is the tax for the whole year). As my income for the year 06/07 not as high as the previous year my tax payment should have been less by about £600.00 but to my horror my arrears balance is now to be debited for £4550.85 at the end of the month and my current arrears is now £1779.00, so the final end of July balance will be £6329.85. Hells teeth! Last year my total tax bill was only £3680.00 and I had declared a larger income than 06/07 tax year. So there is a problem here which needs to be fixed. Or it will make my end of month balance for July look like I haven't started to clear my debt. The online service is all very well but what happens when it screws up??

I have yet to be paid for the last two weeks and only have one more week to go at my current job - hopefully I can get my next job quickly and get two more weeks in on this month. That will get me two weeks ahead on my budget and keep me in the black on my accounts.

I hope at the end of the month I feel I am getting somewhere like I did at the end of June.