The longer I live in Germany, the more I’ve come to realize that the country has a two-tiered income-tax system. And not just the default one for rich people vs. poor people present everywhere else. Instead, there seem to be distinctly different sets of rules depending on whether you’re the one paying the taxes or the one filling your pockets with them. (Although this too is undoubtedly present everywhere else as well.)
One of my first entries for this blog was about how, many, many years ago, the German tax office sent my father in Canada a tax assessment for three years running and, in so doing, also assessed late fees for the first two years because the taxes owing had not been paid promptly. Despite his logical counterargument that it is impossible to punctually pay a bill that was never sent, the tax office insisted that the late fees (and of course the taxes) be paid.
(This is all not nearly as corrupt as it might sound insofar as, as far as I know, German inland revenue does not hire Nigerian princes to target random foreign nationals for them. My father did work in Germany in his 20s and the taxes he owes now are for the pension he earned then. Why the tax office can’t take the taxes directly off his pension check is an ongoing source of bewilderment. To us. Apparently it’s not possible because the tax office and the pension office both belong to the same overall governmental structure. (Same as when I had to provide evidence of my German divorce to the German registry office to be allowed to get married again.))
Fast forward to this year and the stupidity, like the late fees, has been compounded. Instead of having to pay his taxes once per year in arrears as was the case until now, my father is now expected to prepay it in quarterly installments. Or, in other words, being extra financially punished because of the incompetence and greed of the tax office. Because for the necessary international money transfers, quarterly installments also mean quarterly shitty exchange rates on top of quarterly bank fees from, again, banks on both sides of the Atlantic.
My own, more recent experiences with the German tax office have been equally bureautocratic …
I recently wrote about how you have to be handicapped in the right way and in the wrong amount to count as being officially disabled in Germany. (For example, and in my case, any form of depression isn’t enough but any form of cancer is.) The government has officially known about my chronic depression since 2017 but because depression alone doesn’t get you to that all-important cutoff of GdB 50 (= severely disabled), depressed people are considered healthy for all intents and purposes with no benefits.
At least that was the case in 2017. Earlier this year, I discovered by accident that the law had changed in 2020 so that anyone with a GdB got at least some form of tax benefit. I can understand why the government did not take out ads during European football championships that year to announce the change. (And not just because there’s little opportunity to squeeze commercials in during a football match.) But did the disability office inform any of us unseverely disabled people on their books about this new development or per chance inform the tax office about us? No, of course not.
And then last night I was perusing my latest payslip and noticed, again completely by accident, that I was receiving the child-tax credit for only one of my two still dependent daughters. Looking back over my payslips for the past couple of years, it was immediately clear that the child-tax credits were being dropped as soon as my daughters turned 18, regardless if they were still in school or university and thus both officially counting as “dependent” and officially entitled to child support from me. When I asked my accountant about this, she replied that you have to formally apply for the child-tax credit each year in such cases. First off, who tells you this? Second off, how can it be that the tax office immediately knows when one of my daughters turns 18 but is unable to process that the continuing child-care allowance being paid out to my ex-wife for them means that they are still officially classified as dependent?
In other words, inland revenue has absolutely no problem getting information from other government offices when it brings in more money. But they suddenly play Oscar-nominated stupid in the reverse case. One could call that sound fiscal management, I suppose. But if any private citizen tried to follow their lead and stopped paying the obligatory child support at the same time that they stopped receiving the equally obligatory child-tax credit, they’d be on the losing end of a court action before the authorities had finished their next coffee break. And asking for the appropriate rebates after the fact for either my disregarded disability or my dependent daughters is seemingly pointless too. As my accountant told me, once issued, a tax assessment is final.
Except that it isn’t. Again, my experience has been that it all depends in which direction the money is going …
A good many years ago, after having already gotten my tax statement (and refund) for the previous year, I got a revised assessment from inland revenue saying that I owed them more money for that same year. As it turns out, my ex-wife had filed her tax return some time after me and some of her income was pushed onto me, from which the tax office naturally wanted its share. I could have fought it but the amount due was so paltry that it just wasn’t worth the effort to lodge a formal complaint.
In fact, it was more than enough effort to chase down my wife’s accountant just to find out what had happened in the first place. It took me multiple phone calls over the span of two weeks to finally be told matter-of-factly about the above scenario. The accountant wasn’t interested a whit that the money was never actually paid to me and replied that she was just doing what she was told before proceeding to bill me for over 100 EUR for this official “tax advice”. (I calmly wrote her an e-mail back saying that I was not asking for advice but merely an explanation for her illegal activities and that she could go and screw herself. No idea if she did what she was told in this instance too, but I also never got another bill from her (with or without a late fee).)
Now, I’ve never been one of those who are against authority from the get go. (It’s probably better than anarchy but definitely less interesting.) I am, however, becoming increasingly frustrated with unaccountable authority (so not just the tax office) where they dance to a different set of rules and the answer to any question about the process is something lazily unhelpful along the lines of “no”, “just because”, “that’s the way it is”, or the ever-popular “because we said so”, all while quoting some arcane, random collection of letters and numbers from the nearest law book. Is it repetitive and annoying answering the same questions over and over again? Of course it is. I have a similar problem in teaching the same crap to a new cohort of students year in, year out too. But then it’s all part of the job description, isn’t it?
And were I to complain to the University of Not-Bielefeld about it, I’m sure that they would simply tell me that “that’s the way it is”.
Dedicated to my father (†26.11.2024), who sadly didn’t have the chance to read this entry anymore. But, let’s see them get their taxes now …
The Blog About Fog 
Ah….the tax system. It appears that it is just as frustrating and incomprehensible no matter where you live. The U.S. expected me to file taxes on a yearly basis, despite the fact that I had never worked in the U.S., did not have a Social Security Number, and had left the country as a child. They wanted the tax returns filed anyway. Which would cost thousands of dollars in accountants’ fees, not to mention the late fee penalties. And hence I renounced my U.S. citizenship.
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