ArGHGHGHGHG... this is the last holdover from our time in the Netherlands, and it is really quite an annoying one. We have so many fond memories of our adopted homeland, but these blue envelopes are really not one of them...

.. and for those who don't know, the blue envelopes are a communication from the Belastingdienst, the Dutch Tax Office.

Now, when we left the Netherlands, we had done everything that we thought that we were supposed to do... deregistered from the town hall, closed accounts, closed up our ZZP registrations as self employed people, stopped any incoming subsidies and all the rest of that... even filled out the M-form that relates to a partial Dutch tax year...

... but when we arrived back in Australia, it turns out that there was one thing that we didn't realise that we had still running... and it was one of the children's subsidies, a payment to families with children, which seems to be means-based... which also means that every half year, we are asked to provide our world-income to the Dutch tax office, to demonstrate if we are or not able to receive it...

... and quite honestly, we aren't eligible for it, but we need to show figures that say that we don't receive it. It is quite stupid... and annoying, as the tax years between the Netherlands and Australia are half a year out with each other, and there is also the fluctuating exchange rate between the AUD and EUR... which means at best, we are just providing a rough guesstimate on the figures. Right ballpark, but hard to say with any certainty.

Anyway, after the first year of this annoyance, I called the Netherlands and got the subsidy stopped... something that I wasn't able to do online for some reason. And due to the retroactive reporting requirements AND the out of sync tax years... well, it meant that we had to do TWO MORE of these world income declarations....

... and this SHOULD be the last one. I will scream my head off if we get another one next year!

But these are now done, and posted off back to the Belastingdienst... and we can get my head around our normal Australian taxes now. Sigh... why must things be so difficult... there should be a box saying that we DECLINE the subsidy, and that is the end of that... I don't want it, so it shouldn't matter what our income is!

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