The last time I had any dealings with Dr Malcolm Couch, an amiable gentleman, it was to do with me parting with a substantial sum of money, on his urging, to the Manx Treasury.
Now he is giving me money. Well, let us say that in essence he is giving me back some of the money I pay in income tax.
There has been a fundamental change in our professional relationship.
He used to be the Assessor of Income Tax at the Treasury. Now he has re-mustered to Chief Financial Officer at the Treasury and it is in this capacity that he has just sent me a refund on the jack I sent him in January this year to meet my 2012/13 tax commitment. (As a sole trader I have to come up to scratch with the scratch on an annual basis; every January when it should be a case of Happy New Year, let me say).
The refund amounts to £211.43 plus 50p, the latter for what is described in the official covering letter as a repayment supplement.
I don’t get this in the sense that I don’t understand what it means, like most of my dealings with the Treasury.
But I do get the 50p, which is what matters.
Mind you, when I got the cheque, I didn’t know it had come from the Good Doctor Couch.
I didn’t know he had changed jobs. I imagined that the cheque was signed by him but the signature defied comprehension. It was no more than a hasty wriggle of the pen.
Presumably he had written it in haste along with a whole lot of other refund cheques which were piled up on his desk that morning.
But I made some inquiries at Government Office and this revealed his identity and offered my opportunity today to express my sincere and heartfelt thanks to him.
After all one does have to show good manners in such circumstances.
Of course, I don’t understand the complex exercise in doing sums that led to the refund.
I have had them before over the years and I have asked my accountant, who is also an old and valued friend, to explain them to me. But he has always refused.
He knows me all too well I’m afraid. All he would say, in a kindly voice, was: ‘You just wouldn’t understand. My advice to you is this: Carpe diem.’
This is a Latin tag I do understand. In rough – very rough – translation it means take the goddam money and run.
Meanwhile, the remorseless annual cycle of income tax payment is grinding away at the faces of rich and poor alike, and I already have my income tax demand on my 2013/14 assessment to be delivered to Dr Couch at the required time in early January next year.
The deadline is actually three days after my 83rd birthday. Can I have next year’s refund early Dr C? You know, in time for a proper celebration.
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There is a notice on the glass entry door to the Big Apple New York Deli at the bottom of Eskdale Road in Onchan, which says: ‘I swing both ways.’
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Richard Hetherington reports the following Manx crossword clue in the Daily Telegraph: Man, say, in Paisley (4) – ISLE.
