Lighten Up: A spooky old time for the self-employed

Something ghastly is happening at this time of year — namely the yearly tax assessment for the self-employed, writes our Auld Lehane.

It's a spooky old time of the year.

And I'm not talking about Halloween. I'm not talking about witches, ghosts, and goblins.

I'm referring to that other ghastly happening, namely the yearly tax assessment for the self-employed.

The demand on farmers, poor fellows like myself, to dutifully do their books and pay their tax.

Truth be told, most of us became farmers in the first place to avoid the books.

We hate books. We despise paper. Ink makes us sick. Pens turn our stomachs.

But alas, here we are.

Pens shaking in our hands, heads addled, as we now face into a mountain of faded receipts from places that we can't remember.

We stare blankly at bank withdrawals long since forgotten. We struggle desperately to recall cheques written to people who no longer exist, or who are gone from memory, never to return.

They are like the ghosts of Christmas past.

Farmers live for the day. 2025 may as well be 1825.

Most of us cannot remember yesterday, never mind who we paid, or didn't pay, last October.

How many cattle did auld Lehane have in January 2025? Sure, I can't remember how many cattle I had this morning.

It's ridiculous, really. Expecting us to know everything, when many of us know nothing at all.

This demand on us to tot up everything and draw a line under it is close to impossible.

Bottom line, and I've said this before, farmers should not be paying any tax.

Farmers should be exempt from all tax simply because the money a farmer makes goes back into the rural economy. The money I make goes back into the rural economy faster than a bull goes back into a field of cows at the start of the breeding season.

Farmers have no real interest in money. Our only interest lies in cattle, sheep, pigs and hard work.

As soon as we get it, we spend it. And not on frivolous holidays to Barbados, or fur coats from the Baltics.

No, every penny a farmer makes goes straight back out the door to the neighbouring town or village.  Macroom is my local town; even Bandon sounds exotic and foreign. We live locally. We spend locally.

We spend our money on diesel, cattle, pints of porter, timber, concrete blocks, galvanised sheets, bonbons, tyres, slates, poitin, sheep, fertiliser, ration, rope, flour, nails, britches, bread, caps, bill hooks, wellingtons, butter, jam, newspapers, oil, rat poison and marmalade.

The money is spent and no two ways about it. And if the taxman takes it from us, well then the rural economy suffers.

So taxing the poor auld farmer is really doing nothing more than cutting off the blood supply to rural businesses.

Tis a bad job. It should be abolished. And worse again, all the paper gathering that us farmers have to do at this time of the year only takes us away from our real purpose in life.

Namely the job of working like the devil and bringing in money that supports more local business than the mind can comprehend.

So for goodness sake, let's put a stop to this crazy malarkey of taxing farmers. It was never a good idea.

Instead, let us have our few bob and let the wheels of rural Ireland roll as merrily as the wheels on my tractor, after a quick push down the lane.