A dreadful blue envelope…
So every year around April you have to do taxes, here in the Netherlands. And then a couple of months later (most of the time in June) you get a letter with the result. That’s pay extra taxes or you get money back. Getting money back is nice… but that’s not always the case of course.
This year I got a blue envelope (that the signature sign of the tax envelope here), a little earlier then usual. So I opened it and… yeah I have to pay pre taxes for 2015. But I haven’t submitted my taxes yet for this year. Sigh… who is in money trouble? Me or the government? With I big sigh I wired the money. Note it’s January the 9th.
And then next to this letter, there was another letter inside the envelope asking me if a wanted to fill in an automatic access permission to my bank account for the IRS. With that they (the IRS) can withdraw money from my account. In the letter they literally say to make things easier for both of us. The example they gave was: say if I don’t pay in time you have to pay extra late fees. So with automatic access you’ll avoid those fees. Ehm I don’t know if there are people who would accept this reason and fill in the form. But for me that’s kind of a hard line to cross. No thanks I don’t want to give access to my account. I did rather get the letter and see what I have to pay. And beside most of the time when people don’t pay in time is because of one simple reason: they don’t have the money. Or are clumsy and absent minded to forget about paying the bills.
Seriously only in the Netherlands: give us access to your bank account. No way! This is just a big, big NO for me. Look it’s not that I don’t trust the government / IRS / or what ever, but giving access to automatic payment withdrawal should only be for services provided. Like a subscription to the newspaper, phone bills or rent even. But automatic payment withdrawal for the government… what kind of a service do I get from them? Beside more bills to pay?
