TAX RETURN DAY

One of the few days on the year that I hate. I find it exhausting and depressing to be handing over money. Despite some careful reading of the help notes I found no allowance for prostate cancer, so my return was the usual figures drawn from cross referencing my bank statements, invoices and remittance advices. Of course there were also the P60s but the tax man has those already so when I entered the webpage to fill my tax return on line, the P60 information was already filled in. Big Person looms large.

So after hours of pen pushing and flicking backwards and forwards in my account ledger I finally got to the bottom line of “this is what you owe us”. I cannot bare to drag the process out any longer than necessary so I paid up straight away. So I am now free hopefully till I have to repeat it in April 2020. One thing that was uncomfortable was that the tax period ran into the part of 2019 when I was first taken ill in Jamaica with failed kidneys that started all this cancer journey off. An odd feeling being taken back to where this started in such a cold cash and taxes way. I also got a an e-mail from an old work colleague who talked about prostate cancer treatment and her experiences of it via her husband. It was the first time that my hormone depletion treatment had been referred to as “chemical castration”. It shocked me at first and then made me have a lot of questions, which I shall think through and refine before I see my oncologist next time. It was an unfortunate combination, tax man plus castration.

Tomorrow I go to London to take part in a work shop for Enabling Environment leadership skills and competentacies, so tonight I will rest and try to put the tax person behind me. I also get to see my favourite Tracy Emine.