Nessun dorma

Man in bed trying to sleep
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‘So to bed, my mind very full of business and trouble.’ (The Diary of Samuel Pepys 13 September 1661)

Sometimes when I find it hard to sleep after a long day tussling with impenetrable tax legislation, rather than counting sheep, I play the alphabet game.  This is something invented by my Nan when I was young in an attempt to get me to drop off before dawn.  The rules are simple: choose a subject and then work through the alphabet naming something to do with that subject for each letter.

A couple of nights ago I wondered if I could do it with tax but I fell asleep before I got to ‘B’ (it always works but that was some result).  I thought I’d have another try and this is what I came up with.  For the insomniacs amongst you it should work like a charm.

  • Alternative property finance relief
  • Benefit-in-kind
  • Combined nomenclature
  • Disaggregation
  • Enterprise investment scheme
  • Flat rate scheme
  • Gaming duty
  • Herd basis
  • Insurance premium tax
  • Jaffa cake
  • K (PAYE code used when untaxed income is greater than tax-free allowance)
  • Landfill reverse fluff layer
  • Mini one-stop shop
  • Negligible value claim
  • Option to tax
  • Private residence relief
  • Qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme (QROP)
  • Reverse charge
  • Seed enterprise investment scheme
  • Tonnage tax
  • Umbrella collective investment scheme
  • Vaccine research relief
  • Warehoused goods
  • Xystus (Latin: covered walkway)
  • Year of assessment
  • Zero-rate

Done it (with a bit of cheating).  Nan would have been proud of me apart from that cheating (she was strict).

Sweet dreams.

Tax lawyer specialising in business tax, SDLT and VAT

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