Excuse me while I rant about the Inland Revenue, the multitude of idiotic things I've had to fill in to do my tax return, and what they could and should do better

This year, I have effectively three self-employed businesses to do returns for. I've got the main business, some maths tuition that I do for an agency, and some income as a composer (£250 from a commission, next year there will probably be some from my publishers as well.)

It's a bastard. Okay? Just trust me on this.

And the Inland Revenue helpsheets might be more useful if they were brought together. Someone needs to get there and check that all the information that you need to fill out each box is actually on the sheet that they tell you should help with that section. It isn't. It's usually somewhere on one of the sheets, but not always.

And they give NO EXAMPLES AT ALL. This is unspeakably bloody irritating.

i had to make up one figure, because they claimed that net business assets (including £26,915 of outstanding creditors, i.e. people who owe me money for tours) had to be the same as my "capital account", which is capital introduced minus losses and personal drawings. This means that "capital introduced" needs to become £26,567 to make the figures add up.

I sure as hell haven't introduced £29,567 of capital. I'd love to be introduced to it. But that's the only way I can make the figures add p the way they want them to.

However, I've just found that I can offset a chunk of the loss from the main business against the small profits from the other two businesses. Ah, nice.

I think I may be able to defer my Class 4 National Insurance Contributions, which will at least mean that I don't need to pay tax for this year. I'll have to phone them tomorrow to ask them to let me do that.

And even then, they're not going to give me any money. They might take away rather less in the first year that I manage to make a profit, that's the only thing I'll get out of this. Last year I got a tax refund of £81.08 from them, which was nice. This year, I will probably be getting sodall despite making less money. Gah.

On the other hand, at least it's been nice and sunny.

And seeing Elly's compositions (thank you, they look fantastic and I'll download and play them at some point) reminded me - one of my pieces from Canasg, "Crux Fidelis" apparently got done at a concert in Canada on Friday, which was nice - by the "Borealis Chamber Choir", in a place with the unlikely name of Flin Flon, Manitoba. Cool.