It only occurred to me after I'd completed my 2011 census form and sealed it safely away in its overtly official looking blue C4, but there are certain parallels this year. OK there's one, kinda. The incidental character in Adams' multifaceted masterwork was "spending a year dead, for tax reasons". I'm spending a month unemployed, for tax reasons. Kinda. Certainly on the census form that's how I've listed myself... which felt weird.
The thing is, while I'm confidently setting up myself ready for life as a sole trader, I don't (at present) have any contracts, and Gecko's timing in closing their Edinburgh office and laying me (and everyone else) off, leaves me a month (or thereabouts) short of the start of the new tax year. So I could start all the assorted bureaucratic proceedings in motion now... and saddle myself with a requirement for filing 2010-2011 tax returns (for a tax year in which I was paid entirely on a PAYE basis). Or (as I am doing) I can get all my ducks in a row, but hold off shooting them down until after April 6th. Thus neatly saving myself (and the inland revenue) a year's worth of meaningless and unnecessary paperwork. An unexpected upshot of which is that the 2011 census will record me as being unemployed.
Paraphrasing Hotblack's bodyguard makes me feel better about it.
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