IT IS a commonly held belief that truth is stranger than fiction. I suppose there is an element of truth in that, depending on which work of fiction it is that you use as your starting point. As we rapidly approach the fourth trimestre of the tax year, I can't helping thinking of Joseph Heller's classic Catch 22.

In the book, Yossarian decides that he no longer wishes to fly on bombing missions because people keep trying to shoot his plane down, so he asks to be grounded. The only way that he can be grounded is if he asks to be certified mad, but only a sane person would ask to be certified mad to avoid flying. Thus catch 22, a never-ending vicious circle of logic.

Which brings me to the final part of the tax year: the point where you start to realise how much or how little money you have made. When you run a small business in France you need to earn quite a lot of money because you have quite hefty social charges to pay each month. They don't trust you to pay them at the end of the year, so they extract the money from you each month in advance, based on last year's earnings.

So there you are, working your little socks off to make sure that you can pay your monthly contributions, and then you take your eye off the ball. You work a bit too hard and make a bit too much money. Brilliant! You have made a profit.

Hold on, not so fast if you make more profit this year than last year, your charges will go up next year. If your charges go up, you will have to work even harder and run the risk of making even more profit. Not only that, if you make a lot more money this year compared to last, you run the risk of a tax inspection, and you don't want one of those. When the inspector looks at your books and declares them to be a work of fiction, he will create a bit of fiction of his own, and make you pay all of the back tax on that.

So what do you do when you arrive at the last quarter and you have already made as much money as you did in the whole of last year? Buy some stock? Best not do that, because at the end of every year there is a huge national stock-take, and all stock is counted as profit. That is why it is hopeless to try and buy anything in France in December, because everybody tries to sell out of everything before year-end.

You could buy some investments such as heavy plant. That is OK so long as you don't keep it for more than five years - after that it becomes an asset and guess what? You have to pay tax on it. You could always stay at home and watch TV, except for the fact that you have all of those monthly charges to pay. The only way to get the money to pay them is to do more work and make more profit, but then you'll have to pay more charges...

I think I know how that hamster in the wheel felt. Not to worry, it's only fiction, isn't it?