Local Tax Authorities Should Reduce Authority

by Kieran

Recently I received a letter from the States of Guernsey Income Tax stating that they had noticed my return to Guernsey I had been working in the UK.  The letter further asked for details on my income.  I was quite dubious about this so decided to phone up the administrator for that department and to my horror he said that I owed the income tax money for not claiming it on my worldwide income.  I was quite angry at this as never had I ever heard such a thing.

I then went on to seek legal advice where I was there is a double taxation agreement with the UK to avoid this kind of problem via one of two methods.  The first method allows the local tax authorities to chase the UK tax authorities and claim the necessary tax back.  This is a bad idea.  Why? Because the local tax authorities will only claim back the total amount they require based on your earnings.  The second method is to claim the tax back yourself in full, then only pay the local tax authorities the total sum that you owe them, which is a better idea, but it means you must go to more effort yourself.

I’ve spent numerous hours researching and corresponding with various individuals on the matter and eventually entered legal advice which ended up being quite bad.  The said company actually told me I owed absolutely nothing, which was in fact wrong.  This is where things get confusing.

The UK tax year and the Guernsey tax year differ which is why things get really quite confusing when it comes to tax.  The UK tax year 1 starts in July and ends on the last day of March whereas the Guernsey tax year starts on the first day of the year and ends in late July which is why earnings etc. are calculated differently between the two places.

If you are a student studying away from Guernsey in the UK and have worked this will most probably cause you issues.

I’ve now had to send off a P85 form to the following address (and please take good note of it):

FICO Non-Residents
St. Johns House
Merton Road
Bootle
Merseyside
L69 9BB

Once you have sent off this form (I’m about to do this tomorrow) it will take roughly six weeks to claim the money back if you’re fortunate enough to have easy service.  Basically, don’t succumb to the local tax authority in Guernsey, because the phone call I had was atrocious where I was told that the authorities "don’t care" what I earned and when, just that I owe them money which is a real shame.  My brother has unfortunately fell victim to this insanity and has paid the local tax authority thousands of pounds.  Note that they will not give any advice or information about claiming the money from the UK tax authorities, they just leave that completely down to you, and the information isn’t easy to get either.  I received my letter on the 5th September 2008 and I’m just about to send the letter off to the UK on the 1st October 2008.  Yes, it took me almost an entire month to gather all the details required, bearing in mind that the local tax authorities send out a letter after four weeks having not heard anything from the recipient.

Web-Oriented

by Kieran

I’ve been trying to figure out over the last few weeks how I want to direct myself.  When I started out in "programming" - as it were - I was actually working with the web, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  As I now develop Intranet systems, as well as develop scripts and work a lot in SQL I’ve decided to concentrate the next year or so in web development, whilst remaining in client-side application development.  The web is a very prominent place at the moment where applications of old which previously resided on a client’s machine, are now being shifted into the new web generation of applications.

There is a method to my madness.  As you may well know I now work professionally as a web developer primarily working in ASP.NET, VB.NET, JavaScript, XML, XSLT and even more than I can actually remember.  I also work in Python and some seriously old school VBA (which is surprisingly rather fun).  I’ve also got a big heart for charity, and decided to take on another job part-time as a web developer.  I don’t earn any money for it, and neither do I want to earn any money for it.  What I want to earn from it is serious experience, as well as being able to use my skills to help others whom are in more need.  I had actually started this job whilst studying at university but I was also working as a developer, whilst studying, whilst working for charity.  It became a bit too much for me and I decided to give it all up (bar the degree of course).

PHP was always my language of choice, because of its cross-platformness, and its friendly approach to loosely-typed object-oriented development.  Or I could say that I like the syntax, but most probably because I’m more familiar with it.  Let’s face it, if I know a language, and it’s suitable, and it meets the needs and is composed of the features required, what’s the point in changing language?  I can see the hype for Python though, so don’t assume I’m disregarding it.

AJAX is the fancy-pants technology used at the moment, and with the right touch it can be made to be very tasteful.  Whilst it is very much over-used in some stupid places it can also be used to make a website much more usable.

I’ve ordered three books to get the ball rolling despite the concept of AJAX actually being very simple.

  • Bulletproof AJAX
  • Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP
  • PHP Object, Patterns and Practice

The only problem I have now is finding a decent IDE for web development using Mac OS.  Currently I’m using TextWrangler which was recommended to me, but I haven’t found it very powerful just yet.  I’ve previously used some Eclipse plugins which were very good, although it’s been a while since I’ve touched them.  Any recommendations?

Married Life

by Kieran

Well, we’re back from our cruise in the Med, and what a wonderful time we had too.  The wedding - as many of you are aware - went really well and was a fantastic day.  I think I managed to chat to everyone for at least one minute per person due to the amount of people and the small amount of time available.  I would fill everyone in on the details but there’s just too much information.  If I were to recommend a cruise, it would definitely be on P&O’s new cruise ship Ventura which we just travelled with.  Probably the best holiday I’ve ever had that’s for sure.

Myself and Amanda are taking this week to relax and settle into our home, although we came back to a very sick cat and a car which almost killed us.  I’m just spending this week to catch up on e-mails and work-loads as well as paying bills and seeing everyone.

We bought a Wii yesterday so I’ve been playing Zelda and Mario mainly.  It was a treat as I won a sum of money from an award when I was in the UK which we were going to use for a Wii anyway, well, that’s our excuse anyway.

For those whom were at the wedding, we hope you had a good time, there’s a gazillion pictures floating around for you all to see anyway.