Tax Code

Income tax. It's a bloody headache, and that's with Kevin doing everyone's tax. Now Brit friends and rellies probably think I just mean paying it, but no, here it's a whole production.

As in Britain, when you get paid, income tax gets deducted. Unlike in Britain, at the end of every tax year, which seems to be the same as the year year, you have to file a tax return. Many people buy an expensive software package to help them do this, and the software has to be bought new each year. All this makes me wonder what the bloody hell the good folks at the Inland Revenue do, because I would have thought it was their job to make sure you have the correct tax code and your pay office's job, in conjunction with them, to make sure you pay the correct amount of tax every month.

We will get some money back, so that seems hoopy, but the fact is that had we not been overpaying throughout the year, that money could have been earning interest. When I filled in my details to get paid at work, there was actually a question on the form to ask whether I wanted my employer to take more tax. The best explanation I have had for this is that some people like to pay more tax so that they can get more of a return at the end of the year.

And that of course is without the continual annoyance of having the price of goods and services always displayed without tax. You do get used to it, but only in the way that people get used to having arthritis.

So.....another bit of code to learn.

On Ugly Betty last night, no, I will give no spoilers, just to say that Justin was an absolute star, he should have his own show, and Wilhelmina's assistant put out not an APB but a GayPB for fabric for a new design. He's wonderful too, as is Amanda. Oh god it was such a good episode, it's difficult not to just tell the whole thing. But I won't.

Earlier on this week I noticed and was somewhat floored by, an article in The Guardian, about benefit cuts for the unemployed if they fail to make an effort to learn English.
Part of me thought, well, that's reasonable, part of me thought, that's utterly unreasonable. But my quandary was slightly mitigated by another article I read in 'The Week'.
The story was about the 'whitest city in Britain', a town in the north called Easington. The headline was 'the only Asian in the village' for Canadian friends, in Britain we tend to refer to Indian and Pakistani people as Asians, whereas here it is more usual to use the term for Chinese, Korean and Japanese people.
The main Pakistani British man in the article said that although he rarely saw another non-white, he had also not suffered any racism, whereas the Pakistani man he had taken a newsagency over from had. He felt that the cause of the racism had been not the colour of his skin, but rather that whilst he himself was second generation British and thus English was his native language, the previous owner had very poor English.
I had never thought about this angle, which is odd, because I certainly learned about the currency of language for immigrants into European countries when I was studying.

It's nice to have a Friday. Yeah, I know, it's not like I didn't have Fridays before I started work, it's just that they weren't that different. Now I have 'that Friday feeling' again. Hmmm....strange how advertising works, now I've typed that I want a Crunchie. Fat chance of that. However Green Wing's just starting, and not only is it insanely funny, but it has Susan from 'Coupling' in it and she is one of my favourite and in my opinion most underrated actors.
Yeah, I know, y'all watched it three years ago in Britain :)