My accountant said it would shave £250 off his bill if I sorted out my income/expenditure myself, instead of making him do it.

Well – if you think about it, that’s the equivalent of renting out one of my rooms for two nights.  So I decided to gird my loins, not be so lazy, and get on with it.

My pile of receipts is four inches high, each one stuffed into a plastic wallet every time I spend anything.

First I had to separate them out into what I could put against the B&B, and what is private expenditure.

Then I had to sort the first pile of receipts into spending that could be entirely set against tax, eg food bought for my guests; and the ones that I could set 55% against tax, eg room refurbishment and repairs.

It took me the entire day to go through them all – right down to itemising every bunch of grapes I’d bought over the year.  There would have been over fifty Tesco receipts, each one averaging around forty different B&B items mixed in with private purchases.

After hours and hours, I reached the grand total: £22,000. And then I looked at the dates again. April 2016-2017. The previous tax year.  Already completed.