Oh tax office, what are you doing now?

It is no secret that there are a few women here at Amayzine with particularly little general knowledge and common sense when it comes to tax matters. One of those women is me. As soon as you start talking about assessments, receipts, income, outcomes, quarters, and taxes, I automatically tune out and only shout “I don’t understand.” I don’t want to understand it either, that is absolutely true, but largely my ignorance stems from a total fear of numbers and an accompanying blockage for anything tax related.

This manifests itself in various ways and one of those ways is my structural refusal to open blue envelopes. How that process exactly works you can read here, in short, it comes down to me neatly ignoring blue envelopes, keeping their existence silent until I receive an angry email or phone call from a scary tax inspector. Only then do I, possibly, take action.

Last week, I heard the news that the Tax Office is going to stop sending blue envelopes and will only communicate digitally. Every day, a truckload of blue things is delivered to citizens and businesses, which amounts to 150 million (!) pieces per year. That is of course incredibly wasteful and completely unnecessary, because those letters are not opened anyway. This is not a hasty decision, the transition is happening gradually and the intention is that everyone will have switched from print to screen in about seven years.

And now I am really wondering whether this will be my salvation or my downfall. Because even though I only open the letters when it’s already too late and I only take action when they call me about it, those letters do make me aware that something is going on. Moreover, you should not think that I am much better at emailing. I can calmly wait a week to respond because it just doesn’t happen, and when I know there are scary emails waiting for me, I ignore my inbox as if it were that annoying ex from eight years ago.

So it’s very likely that this will be the beginning of the end. If there are any tax talents among you; I am more than happy to be of service. And to the Tax Office, I want to say in advance: sorry if I don’t respond to your email, but I am so used to the blue mail that it will definitely take about ten years before I can properly handle email. Really.