The courts summer break, through August and September, is always a quiet period.  It’s one of the things I love about working down there…I have two clear months every year to write without a daily deadline.  Last year I wrote Devil in the Red Dress, this year I spent the months editing my novel.

The courts have been back since the beginning of October but it’s been a slow start. The trials passing through the doors of the Central Criminal court haven’t been the type that would easily tempt an editor.  One of the least savoury aspects of this job is the fact that you rapidly start to see trials from an almost commercial standpoint.  There are certain cases that get everyone talking, the one’s with the “water cooler” edge and those are the ones you look out for.

It’s not that journalists are unnecessarily ghoulish, it’s just that we know the trials the public want to read about.  Cases with elements that mark them out of the ordinary so that they stand apart from the standard details of these brutal crimes.  It’s a sad fact that familiarity really does breed contempt so if there are too many of a particular type of trial the public, and consequently the press lose interest.  Every murder used to be big news in the days when there were only a couple a year.  These days we can have one a day so the process of selection begins.  Anything unusual about a trial will elevate it to something of interest.  The bigger the violence, the tragedy or the irony the bigger the splash will be.  It’s not unusual, the selection process was no different in the Victorian press, even if the style of writing may have changed over the years.

Anyway, trials like this have been thin on the ground since the courts went back.  It might seem as though there is always a big murder in the news but that’s not always the case.  There can be a run of trials at some times and nothing for months at others.

So here I am at home waiting on news of one book and the next one not yet started.  This is a time to catch up with all the minutiae of self employed life; updating the diary, filing notes and cuttings, filling in tax returns.  Tax returns are the bane of the self employed existence.  I’m not organised enough to find myself an accountant ahead of the deadline so in the middle of October you’ll find me up to my elbows in receipts, tearing my hair out and shouting at my calculator.  I like the freelance life but taxes are our penance for a bit of freedom.

If you’ve never filled out a return you are very, very lucky.  It’s a labarynthine form and if you’re not mathmatically inclined or, I’m increasingly inclined to thing, in possession of a qualification in advanced cryptography, trying to understand them is like trying to run while waist deep in mud.  They’re doable, eventually, but at the end I always feel as if I’ve handed over a portion of my soul as well as a chunk of my bank balance.

Speaking of which I’d better get back to them.

I’m not a violent person but after sitting for the past few hours staring at the dreaded Form 11 I want to visit all kinds of biblical plagues on the Revenue, and the Department of Finance too while I’m at it.  There are so many pages…and so many numbers…and so many notes!

I’m a writer – I deal with words – numbers make my head hurt.  I would happily give the Revenue a third of my wages (well maybe not a third) if only they would write their forms in plain English!  Until I had actually looked at the damn thing I was pretty confident that filing my first tax return would be no problem at all, but now three hours later I’m feeling like the school dunce and it’s still not filled in.

I know I should get an accountant.  Getting an accountant would be the sensible, sane thing to do, given my numerically challenged status.  But that would be way too sensible.  I decided over the summer that I would file at least one lot of returns myself.  So I could understand in future how it’s done.  Well I take it back!  I don’t want to file anymore.  And after Tuesday’s Budget they’ve only gone and made it even more complicated.  Income levies indeed! (Not even getting into the whole 2009 Budget thing here).

At this stage my brain is well and truly boggled and my frustration levels are sky high.  It doesn’t help that all my self employed colleagues have been telling me how simple the whole process is.  Or that I’m struggling with a form that doesn’t even have my name on it.

Because this is the other thing that irritates me about the Tax Man.  Ever since I went self employed I have become someone with whom he will not talk.  I have become a chattel of my (PAYE) husband’s and no longer merit a letter or any form of correspondence.

There is actually a reason for this.  It’s not just random meanness, unfortunately.  Myself and the husband, you see, are jointly assessed.  And the husband is the principal earner.  When part of the joint income is self assessed, it’s supposed to be the principal earner who fills out the forms.  It’s that assumption that irritates me.  I was the one who filled out the forms to become self assessed.  They took my PPS number to do it.  Then they wrote back to the husband and told him I was now self assessed.

This was never the case when I also had a PAYE job.  I was deemed important enough to be sent my own tax forms in their own envelopes.  Even though we were still self assessed.  Now that I have more paper work to do and horrible confusing forms to fill out, I don’t even warrant a letter.  They even tried to tell me I needed the husband’s permission to use the Revenue online service…though that’s been cleared up now.

I’ll eventually get my head around the form, and I will be sad so hand over the money but hand it over I will.  I just don’t understand why just because I’m self-assessed one of us has to cease to exist.  I get the principal earner idea but I’m talking stationary here.  All I want is the letters addressed to me.  Rather than having to locate them in the husband’s rather chaotic filing system.

It’s all very frustrating and annoying and is enough to make you want to be a tax exile!  I bet then they’d use my name!