Tuesday 23 June.
I was wide awake at 5 am and couldn't get back to sleep again. I lay for half an hour and found that Moira wasn't able to sleep either. I got up and made a cup of tea. We lay in bed and had our tea and read the paper after downloading it to our iPads. I wasn't able to just lie there and not able to concentrate on reading so decided I would have to do something energetic to keep my mind off the worries about my tax. I decided to go for a walk and Moira was happy to accompany me.
We briskly walked the route I was planning to run when I developed my calf injury last week. It was up Bird Rd and back round to Ibis at the end of the parallel street then Pope Rd round to Edinburgh Rd and home. It was a good walk in nice cool early morning weather with a bright red sun rising above the horizon. It took us about 45 minutes and we were back home in time to catch the quiz questions that are posed every morning on ClassicFM.
I made the breakfast and forced myself to have something to eat even though it made me feel queasy. After washing up I read the paper and attempted the crossword until it was time to phone the taxman. The letter said to phone between 8:30 am and 5:00 pm so we waited until after 9:30 am here before dialling the number on the iPad and through Skype. I thought we would have to go through a switch board then be put on hold for ages before getting connected to the right department, it was a surprise when the number went right through to the appropriate office. I gave the woman my name and the reference number from the letter and after she got the file the connection on Skype started to break up and she couldn't hear me. I said that I would phone back and tried again without any great confidence. This time I got through to a man Mr Muncaster, the one who had signed the letters. It all worked out quite well and he was fairly friendly. What the problem amounted to was that he wanted proof about the tax deducted for my pension in SA by SARS. I said that I could get proof, all he wanted was some evidence of tax deductions. One of the other questions he had asked on his letter was where I was resident. I told him that we had a house in SA and we spend some time here and also in Spain for the winter, and only about 4 months per year in the UK. He asked if I had details about this and I told him I had it all in my diaries. He said he would have to investigate if we would then be classified as non-resident of the UK therefore not liable for UK tax on foreign income. If I am UK resident he said that I would have to pay the full UK tax on my pension and claim back from SARS what I had paid in SA, I told him that would be quite a mission with SA bureaucracy. Another question was did I have an annual P60 equivalent issued by the pension provider as they do in the UK. I told him that used to be the case when tax returns were paper based but now it is electronically loaded directly on to your online tax form, he was amazed as this was more advanced than the UK system. At the end of a fairly pleasant exchange he was happy that I had contacted him with the information about tax deductions and to compile information of when and how long we were in the UK over the previous 5 years to supply to him when we return to the UK at the end of July. The conclusion was that I didn't seem to have a lot to worry about and it could turn out that if it was concluded that I wasn't resident in the UK over the period under review then I might end up getting a tax rebate!
I was now feeling so much better and it was a heavy load of my shoulders. To try to get some SARS tax information I had to get into their internet site and needed my laptop to do that. Unfortunately the battery was flat and I had taken the wrong charger with me from home. We drove into what used to be a computer shop in Port Shepstone but it was now a DVD rental shop. They directed us to a place at Shelley Beach and we drove there next. It turned out to be a computer training centre but they told us about a place in the Shelley Mall. This was the right place, a little computer workshop type of place and they had the correct charger. He checked it out first and it worked fine. Before leaving the Mall we did some shopping at the Pick-n-Pay supermarket then it was back home.
Once back I got the laptop booted up and checked my files with SARS. I couldn't get my assessments as that required some updated version of the Adobe viewing programme but I could get the forms that I had completed and that might have to do. After that I went through my diaries and blogs and Moira wrote down the dates and countries we had stayed in over the last 5 years. It worked out that over this period we hadn't spent any more than 4 months in the UK in any one year. This seemed to indicate that we weren't offially resident in the UK during that period
We spent the afternoon just relaxing in the lounge, reading and me attempting the crossword. I was feeling a lot better and able to concentrate on my 'Rumpole' book. Also I was hungry but still didn't want to eat too much, we satisfied ourselves with a 'full English breakfast' for our dinner, it was just right.
In the evening there was the last game of cricket between England and NZ. It was a 'one off' 20/20 match. I was dead tired after not much sleep last night and only lasted a few overs before I fell asleep in the chair. Moira was going to bed early and gave me a shake. I was soon sleeping again in bed and had a very good night's sleep. I don't know how the cricket turned out?
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