Tax time

It's that time of year again....crocuses are coming up, the days are getting longer, it's almost Spring!  This also means it's time to file your taxes!  While the deadline in Canada is April 30th for filing your tax return, here it is April 1st.  I was just thinking back to my first year here, and how much scarier a process this was for me than it always was filing taxes "back home".  First of all, I had no idea that in order to file my taxes, I would need to have a "digid".  Someone did actually mention to me that I would need to apply for one, so I made sure to arrange this right away.  I got all of the papers in the mail, and put them in a safe place with my salarisstroken (pay stubs) and jaaropgave (T4 back home) and figured I would take all of that to the appointment with a local accountant which I had arranged.  Later, I realized that I needed to activate the digid by a certain date or the activation code would expire...I of course did this too late, so had to apply for a new one again!  Aaah!  

I remember walking to my appointment with the accountant, because at that point in time I didn't even own a bike.  The office was probably 4 kms from where I lived.  This is of course not far at all, but I remember being unsure of where it was and afraid I would show up late etc.  Looking back, I see how small my world was at that point in time.  I walked everywhere, and the essential parts of my life existed in probably a 1km radius. 

The tax return did end up being completed in time, and the accountant managed to get some money back from the money I had spent on health insurance in my first year.  Since I had only been there half the year, I hadn't earned much and qualified for some sort of tax break!  However, going to the accountant led to a pretty steep bill (which came I think 3 months later or so!).  I didn't trust myself to do it alone, online, in Dutch at the time.  So, I didn't have a problem spending the money to ensure the job was done properly, but looking back I suppose I could have found a Dutch person to help me out with it.  

This year my bf will be doing it for me (yay!).  I feel like I have to excuse my laziness and dependence here by saying that I always did my own taxes in Canada (literally from the time I was 16 years old).  I actually feel like this is the first year where I might have tried doing my taxes here on my own, but apparently since we live together now it makes sense to file them together.  This sounds a little complicated, so I will let him handle it.  I've got all the papers together...and have a brand new digid code...it seems every year I have to arrange this all over again since I lose the code from the year before.  And every year I curse the Dutch government for having coming up with this crazy thing.