Her Majesty Wrote Me

In all my decades of paying taxes, including since I've been working for myself and filing my own taxes, I'd never once received a personal letter from HMRS "reminding" me to pay my taxes. Sure, I got the generic computer generated ones, or security related ones when, say, I changed my password or address, but never once anything to do with "paying tax".

This year is different.

Her Majesty's people are going out of their way to chase down crypto people. The letter was addressed to me very personally in a "we see you" tone. Interestingly enough, the world 'cryptocurrency" never appears anywhere in the correspondence. They are referred to as "crypto assets" because, of course, calling them currency would mean I don't have a dime to pay in tax. Very clever.

I already know how much I "owe", of course, and I've already prepared all the documents using some fancy software. I just haven't paid yet. I have till midnight on the last day of this month and I intend to milk out all the profits I can still get from the amount - and it's a huge amount. In fact, it's going to be the most tax I've ever paid in any one year.

I try not to think about it though. The last time I wrote such a large cheque was when I put down the deposit for my flat. The amount also buys a lovely 2-bed apartment in The Gambia, or a studio apartment on the Canary Islands - two of my dream places on the Atlantic.

Talking of coasts, islands and the Atlantic, may crypto people have pro-actively fled to Portugal, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Puerto Rico and other such crypto-friendly places. Some have gone as far as to renounce their American or British citizenships to avoid paying tax on their crypto. I don't think I'd go to that extreme. My tax bill is large, but not that large 🤣

I know it's not always about the amount of money though. Some of these folks are ideologically opposed to the idea of paying tax altogether, no matter the amount. I'm not quite in that camp, even though I do see some of their points. I still think we need to live in communities and someone has to pay for some of the basic things we share such as healthcare and security, infrastructure and education, and so on. Yes, yes, there's massive corruption and all that, but we have to figure out a balance or society will collapse into Mad Max.

Peace & Love,

Adé