“Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.”

Like many other self-employed dealers, I have just paid my income tax bill. The above quote from Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone With The Wind, came to mind as I wrote the cheque.

So far I have managed to avoid death and childbirth, but taxes are a different matter.

I must confess to hating to pay income tax but my accountant says, “Think of it this way, if you didn’t have to pay any tax at all you would be very poor indeed”. 

Of course, this is little comfort as I read about all these non-domociled people who head up gigantic businesses, but are able to arrange their affairs in such a way as to pay no tax at all.

So my commiserations to all the dealers who happily paid up this week.

However, I did remember to run the magnetic strip on my cheque through our powerful degausser, so in all probability, my payment will have to be hand-entered by someone somewhere – that should slow its progress through the system.