Hello everyone, it’s been a while you don’t get any juicy updates. Well, that’s because there was not much to report so far: Mei-Lin’s application for Italian citizenship is done, now we just have to wait patiently; Serse’s bureaucratic situation is now settled in both Switzerland and Taiwan; Penelope is still not old enough to enter the Swiss draconian re-education system; and we got the corrected Swiss family book.
So, all good? Nope.
You might remember my tax refund Odissey for 2019. A refresher if you don’t want to read back the post: the Swiss government owed me a good amount of money because they “overtaxed” my salary during the first few years after I moved to Switzerland. This is a normal situation, you have to apply for a refund and they usually send the money back after one, maximum two years. Fact is, 4 years had passed and this money was nowhere to be seen. After PAINFUL investigation, it turned out that SOMEONE (despite my efforts it was not possible to attribute fault) in some office made some mistake, a simple human error which caused my 2019 tax declaration to be “stuck” in a bureaucratic limbo. After LOT OF TEARS AND CURSES, I finally managed to have my 2019 tax overcontribution refunded in 2023. Since 2022 I am on a C residence permit, so my salary is not pre-taxed anymore thankfully, but I still need to get money back from the tax declarations of 2020, 2021 and (part of) 2022: these were all stuck, because the cantonal tax office processes them sequentially, so they have been all held back from the issue with 2019. But once the 2019 SNAFU was solved, I was assured that the others would proceed swiftly.
You guess where I’m getting at…
Almost one year has passed and no sign of the 2020 money. Back a couple of months ago, I decided to call the tax office of the city of Zerneve, just to be sure. The young, unenthusiastic, and clearly annoyed zoomer female voice at the other end of the phone basically told me:
It’s OK, you just have to wait.
And so be it. But because I had a bad feeling about this, and also because it’s tacking FUCKING FOREVER, a couple of days ago I called again.
Uhhh… it’s not us, you have to call the tax office of the Canton Zerneve…
I could swear it was the same lady of last time… But then why this time she routes me to the cantonal tax office?
So I call the cantonal office, and of course the line is forever busy. So I sent an email instead. And yesterday I got the answer.
Dear Mr. Fantasia,
Unfortunately there is also an issue with the tax at source for the year 2020. We have one month missing of tax at source (August). I have already requested our colleagues who are in charge for this to clarify the problem. It is difficult to forecast how long this will take. Once we have the full tax at source, we can do the tax assessment.
AYFKM? ARE YOU REALLY SO MUCH FKM???
I literally replied with legal threats. I want to KNOW who or what I need to blame for this.
Are You Fucking Kidding Me 