meh

[julesjones]

Meh. Migraine the last few days. Hit it with codeine at the first sign of trouble, so the only feeling unwell involved was feeling vaguely queasy at one point and thus consuming about half the ginger-related comestibles in the house without even meaning to. But it it still did strange things to my attention span and physical co-ordination (and one of the souvenirs of this is a "paper" cut from a heavy card file...).

I got my brain back today, so I've been wrestling with my UK tax return. What I hadn't realised what that the registration process involves waiting a week or so for a security code to arrive by snail mail (for security reasons), and I only got that on Friday. So I've a week left to feed my tax return into the database, or face a fine. I'm not usually this much of a procrastinator on tax returns, but I've also never had to do a tax return while actually in possession of a full time job before, and as previously noted, said job turns my brain to Swiss cheese by the end of the day.

And after I've done that, it'll be time to do the US tax return. *that's* going to be fun this year, because I'll have to work out how to declare my UK job's income and PAYE tax.

Comments

[sweh.livejournal.com]

Check with a professional (I'm most definitely not one!), but I believe that the tax agreements between the UK and the US are such that if you earned the money in the UK and paid tax there then you don't need to declare it in the US.

[julesjones]

Yes, there's a tax treaty, so we can set the UK tax off against the US tax. But we still need to declare that the income exists and we have paid tax on it under tax treaty regs, because we actually are dual-country taxpayers -- one of the quirks of being Green Card holders is that we continue to have an obligation to file a US tax return for some years after leaving the US, in the same way that US citizens owe Uncle Sam a cut no matter where they actually live.

This gets further complicated by the fact that the US tax year runs Jan to Dec, and the UK tax year runs April to April...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear that you're over the migraine. Good luck with the tax returns.

[julesjones]

I've got a lot better at spotting the early warning signs, so nowadays I usually get in with the codeine in time to suppress most of the symptoms. It's still three days of fuzziness, but that's a lot better than three days of feeling extremely sorry for myself. :-)

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

Good luck!

I don't wish to rub salt into the wounds, but I've just had a letter from the taxman (or possibly the taxwoman) saying that, based on what they know of my financial affairs, I won't have to do a tax return next year, for the first time in many years.

[julesjones]

It's the first time I've ever had to do one as a UK taxpayer, so I suppose I shouldn't grumble too much. At least they let you pick the start date of your accounting year if you're running a small business (which the writing business is), so I can use the same set of accounts as I do for the US tax return. I just have to go through and tweak for a few things that fall into different boxes on this side of the Pond.