Aren’t tax and National Insurance really easy to calculate? NOT.

From form ca72b:

The Class 2 weekly rates for the 2006-2007 tax year are
• Self-employed £2.10
• Share Fishermen £2.75
• Volunteer Development Worker £4.20

So… erm… Share Fishermen (whatever they are) get to pay 30% more National Insurance than ‘normal’ self-employed people. And Volunteer Development Workers get to pay a whopping 100% more.

Then we have:

You do not have to pay Class 4 NICs if you are:
• a woman aged 60 or over, or a man aged 65 or over, at the beginning of the year of assessment (including if your 60/65 birthday falls on 6 April)
• not resident in the UK for income tax purposes
• a trustee, executor or administrator (in some cases only), or
• a sleeping partner – that is you supply capital and take a share of the profits but take no active part in running the business, or
• a diver or diving supervisor working in connection with exploration or exploitation activities on the UK continental shelf or in UK territorial waters, and you receive income that is assessed for tax by a charge on trade profits.

I was with it all the way up to divers on the UK continental shelf. This is as bad as the Autonomous Franco-agriculturalist thing on the E111 form.

It’s a strange world.