Most self-employed people hate January with the passion normally reserved for a professional rival who gets a gig for which we would clearly have been the better choice. First, the weather makes it difficult to get to work, and that hurts more when you don’t get paid if you don’t turn up. This is why I once walked four miles through a foot of snow to see the film He’s Just Not That Into You. Although I do appreciate, obviously, that being paid to watch a ropey rom-com is still a great deal easier than going down a mine, even if I did lose a mitten on the way home.
But even with the snow melted, it’s still self-assessment deadline month. I actually quite like doing my taxes: it is the one time of the year that I feel I have imposed objective order on anything. And the only time when my need to keep everything in date order, in colour-coded folders of ascending importance, is properly rewarded.
But this January, even by its own standards, HMRC has been the least popular kid in the room. Last week the National Audit Office criticised it for failing to answer 44 million of the 103 million calls made to customer “contact centres”, despite having 10,500 full-time staff. As I’ve already done my tax return, I decided to do a bit of extra bonus maths. HMRC’s phone lines are open 84 hours a week. Assuming that full-time staff do a 42-hour week (which I’m sure they don’t, exactly, but it’s half of 84, and I only have a pencil, so give me a break. I’m not taking off Bank Holidays and Christmas, either), that means 5,250 staff working at any one time. They answered 59 million calls last year. That’s 2.57 calls per person, per hour. If they’d also answered every one of the calls they ditched, that would still only have brought them up to 4.49 calls per person per hour. And that doesn’t seem impossible to me. Maybe Moira Stuart needs to sit on their desks and have a word.
But then yesterday, the story broke that HMRC would be driving sports stars away from big events by trying to grab hefty chunks of their sponsorship deals. Before, visiting sports stars were taxed on the number of days they spent in the UK. Now the plan is to tax them on the percentage of events they do here. That might not be too bad if a sport has lots of events — Roger Federer is scheduled to play 19 tournaments in 2010, only two of which will be in the UK. But it’s hard going for marathon runners, who usually race only twice a year. If one of those is in London, they’ll be taxed on half their year’s sponsorship money for one day’s running.
I never really believe it when people wail that taxing bankers will simply drive them out of the country. Most of us aren’t like the George Clooney character in Up in the Air, with no ties at all. We don’t live somewhere just for its tax rate, but because we like the area, or our kids are at school, or our partner has a job nearby or whatever. But sportsmen are different — why won’t they just run in New York, not London?
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On the shelf
The Waterstone’s book chain has responded to poor Christmas sales by appointing a new managing director, Dominic Myers. I feel a surge of hope that he can bring the chain back from the brink. For several years it has been virtually impossible to buy a book in Waterstone’s. There are dozens of copies of maybe 50 that have just been published. There are piles of notebooks, racks of wrapping paper and plenty of magazines. But very few books that were published more than three months ago. When I discover a new crime novelist, I invariably go back to find their earlier books — the author is new to me, not new full stop.
But it has been increasingly difficult to buy anyone’s back list from Waterstone’s. And I don’t need wrapping paper if I can’t find the book that I want to buy as a present. Waterstone’s opening hours are terrific — I can buy a paperback at ten o’clock on a Saturday night. And I will, I promise, as soon as they get some in stock.
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Outlook unsettled
The BBC may drop the Met Office, after almost 90 years. They have apparently been talking to Metra, the national forecaster of New Zealand. Let’s just take a moment to think about what that really means. The BBC reckons that people on the opposite side of the world have a better chance of predicting the weather in Birmingham than Rob McElwee. That is a pretty debilitating forecast.
Belt up
Peppa Pig, a children’s TV character, will start wearing a seatbelt. Not because pig-centric car fatalities are on the increase, but because a parent complained that her daughter wouldn’t wear a seatbelt when Peppa doesn’t. Peppa has a snout. She is two-dimensional. If you can’t win the “just because an animated pig does it doesn’t make it right” debate, you shouldn’t have children.