Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Question Everything. Twice.


I have so far resisted posting this little tale but it has reached a conclusion so here goes.
A couple of weeks ago I received a tax bill for the princely sum of £1446.08. It was from the tax year 07-08 so a while ago. For that year I had been paying my taxes through PAYE so I wondered how I had managed to underpay that amount of money. At the time I was working two jobs and there seemed to be some kind of tax conflict there. After receiving the first letter from the tax office I called them and they informed me that my second employer had given me my tax allowance as well as my first. Whoops! It seemed I'd had the money but someone, somewhere had messed up. I was led to believe it was the company I still work for as they were my second employer.
What the person on the other end of the phone had neglected to tell me was that they had mixed up my first and second employers. On the phone tonight after a little direct questioning I found that small but very relevant fact out. I had given them the correct information but they'd mixed things up. When the tax office checked they realised their mistake and wrote off the offending sum.
The moral of this story is to check and then check again. What at first seems straight forward may not be that simple at all.
I'm now in the wonderful position of not being £120 a month worse off.
In other good news today my black Fedora turned up and it fits. Pictures soon no doubt.
Right, time to celebrate a little.

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