Tax Return Resistance

There's something about the words " tax return,"  that turn my heart to stone and cause the life to seep from my soul
Words like capital gains allowance float incomprehensibly in front of my eyes and I try desperately to cling onto their meaning.
Ninesh sits patiently by my side, trying to control his frustration.
" What do you mean, you didn't keep the receipt for that?," he says.
"it's not that I didn't keep it," I say defensively, " it's just that I don't know where it is."
Every year, as April 5th arrives, I vow that this year will be the year I start filling in my tax return early, saving everything in an orderly way, remembering how much you can claim per mile, knowing exactly how much the mortgage interest was.
Every year I make that vow.
And every year it gets to January 20th, with 11 days to go before my return must be filed and I haven't even started.
I'm not sure why.
Once you start filling it in, it's never as bad as you think it's going to be. 
Especially now that you can do it virtually, on line and there's that reassuring percentage marker across the top showing you exactly how much of your form you have completed.
It's amazingly comforting.
" Yay," I shout triumphantly, "1% complete." 
Which means I've filled in my name and address.

I know it's churlish, this resistance to filling in a form, to adding and multiplying and percentaging, to totalling up my last year's life and slicing off a third.
But with every fibre of my being, I fight the moment when I have to sit down and do it.
I think maybe I struggle with the concept that parts of your life have to be defined purely by their monetary value.
Our flat in London, the lovely flat I used to live in, right in the heart of London next to the canal where I was woken every morning by the quacking of ducks, becomes a taxable asset with allowable expenditure.
The stories that I sit and write dreamily in the shed and living room, become a loss making business.
The long hours that I work at the Children's Centre, optimistically believing that they might really make a difference, are reduced to nothing more than a disappointing income. 
And I can't help finding it all depressing.
I can't stop myself from believing that what you do, should be so much greater than a balance between profit and loss.
 Life should mean so much more than the gap between taxable assets and disposable income.
I fill in my National Insurance Number and the details of my employer- 8% complete.
I'm making progress.

Most of the things we do, can't be quantified or valued: the cleaning, the smiling, the listening, the dreaming.
Yet those untaxable, non- profit making moments are what define us
I hate to see everything I have done over the last year divided up into sections and fitted into tickable boxes.
I like to believe I'm so much too mysterious and enigmatic to fit into a box
!
Self-employment done- 47% complete.

But if I am honest, there is a simpler reason why I spend so much time resisting filling in my tax return.
The truth is, it highlights my lack of organisation and the chaotic way I think and live.
Those are not things to be proud of.
If I had kept all my receipts in the same place, if I could remember where I had put my P60, if I had put all my invoices in the right file on my computer, then filling in a tax return would be easy.
But I haven't done any of that, so filling in my tax return highlights my failings- and that's never a nice thing to see on paper.

All the sections are done, 90% complete.

All that's left to do is to submit and pay.
Then it will be 100% complete.
The pain over for another year.

But somehow, even that seems wrong.

Recently my mum and dad were on holiday in the Canary Islands.
As my dad struggled to lift his foot onto the curb, leaning on his stick, a voice behind him asked if he needed help.
Dad declined and the owner of the voice, an elderly German man, walked past him and stood in front of him, waiting patiently.
" It's over for us," he said to my dad sympathetically as he finally made it onto the curb.
Taken aback, dad thought for a minute and said:
" But I still eat a lot! "

And he's right. 
The world is full of delicious food, still waiting to be eaten.
Until we breathe our last breath, nothing is over, nothing in life should be 100% complete.
Not even a tax return.

With my finger hovering over the "pay now," button, I watch the percentage marker:  97% complete.
For a moment I let my chaotic thoughts wander into 2014, a new year, still only 0.83% complete. I imagine it full of hopes and dreams and laughter and love ( I only ever imagine the good parts )  and all that untaxable potential gives me strength.

My resistance melts, I press the button.
My taxes are returned for another year.
My future is 0% complete.