Making a Contribution, 365

Comedians are all about self-assessment, onstage and off.

February is a funny time of year for comedians, particularly the full-time ones. On one hand, the gigs start kicking back in again after the bumper Christmas period then the barren wastelands of January. On the other, you've probably just paid your tax bill for the whole of the 2017-18 tax year, which is always fun.

Actually this is quite a confusing time for anyone of a freelance persuasion: genuinely a time of self-assessment. It's nice to find out you had a good year in 2017-18, but that finished ten months earlier and you'll now have to pay a big percentage of those long-forgotten earnings to HMRC. If you're skint, you'll be hoping not to pay much tax, but that also means a seriously sobering annual profits figure that might just send you back to the day job. It's a conundrum.

Of course, sensible people probably keep track of how their yearly income is going; ideally you'd set up a dedicated bank account for tax and make little deposits, 365 days a year (which is not to be confused with NoDeposit 365, where online gamers can browse the best bonus codes, every day). But, hey, who wants their comedians to be that sensible? Aside from when they're doing the old comedy straight-man stuff, of course.

Peter Serafinowicz in the film Shaun Of The Dead, for example: you can imagine him paying his tax into a dedicated account, only to find out that unwanted housemate Nick Frost had found his credit card and spent it all on Cornettos? Pete ends up becoming a zombie anyway, so might as well have frittered that money on Cornettos himself. Mmm, Cornetto fritters: now there's a thought.

So are we suggesting that everyone should spend their tax money on ice creams because an undead apocalypse might be just around the corner? Of course not: you may be lactose intolerant, in which case an ice cream every day would actually be less fun than giving that money to the government, although the constant tummy turmoil might also make the eventual zombification less upsetting.

Do zombies still have allergies, after the bite? Either way, they'd almost certainly struggle to fill out the online Self-Assessment form, particularly all that stuff about Class 2 and Class 4 contributions and having to work out how much you actually need to pay because it doesn't automatically subtract what you've already paid on account, oddly.

HRMC are really going to have to simplify all that if there is a zombie apocalypse, because they're hardly likely to just let you off, should the transformation happen. Yes, you may now be unfit for work, due to being a flesh-eating zombie, but in 2017-18 you were a working stand-up comedian and really should have been setting some of that Christmas-gig money aside.

So even if the unlikely zombie apocalypse does happen, it's probably advisable to keep a few quid back for January anyway, as you'll still be liable even in an apocalyptic dystopia. And try to do the self-assessment as early as possible, as you know what they say in undead accountancy: a zombie rarely keeps his receipts.