As I began my penultimate day within the buzz of the Sutton office that houses the creation of Taxation, I came to the realisation that a reflection on my last seven months in the media’s capital of tax was well overdue.

So, if you’re sitting comfortably, allow me to start at the beginning.

It is August 2010, two months after leaving the futile adolescence of student life, I found myself wistfully wedged on the sofa bruised and beaten by rejection, with my only solace being that indeed it was not I who was appearing under Jeremy Kyle’s erratic eye.

By the off chance I decided to email Mike the editor. ‘I’ll see what we can do,’ he replied and – voila! – one month later the Rachael-shaped dent in the sofa was fading, my internship beginning, and my confidence restored.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) ascending from a family involved with all things tax, I had always made a point of pleading ignorant of interest in these matters. So, when at last I emerged out of the other end of a journalism degree and arrived at Taxation’s door, my feigned lack of interest in tax had to be amended.

Reporting, sub-editing and forming opinions on a topic you of which you have steered clear over 22 years is, to say the least, taxing (ouch!). If, however, it was not for this magazine, I very much doubt my journalistic development and insight into business would have progressed with such vigour.

The team here has done a magnificent job of transforming my ignorance of tax into a (albeit closeted) passion, and for that I am sure both my tax-veteran father, another Mike, and I are grateful.

What’s next? It’s a full-time job at another business-to-business firm, a position which without my experience here at Taxation would have taken a great deal longer to have achieved.

Let’s face it: I owe a lot to tax.

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