Bonkers: either I or the Tax Service

Belastingdienst, the Dutch tax service, sent a form for me to fill out in which I needed to indicate projected future earnings. They do this almost each year—well, regularly—so that they can let you pay your taxes for 2020 in 2019 instead of the more reasonable 2021. And every year I postpone filling out this form (deadline August 1) as long as possible, so that I can always include my latest earnings in the estimate.

That’s the pre-amble. When I checked the form yesterday, I noticed the tax service wanted me to fill out my projected earnings for last year, 2008. I received this form at the end of May, two full months after I had reported them my income for 2008 (the cut-off date for which is April 1 in the Netherlands). More than a year after they had charged me income taxes over 2008 based on their own estimates. And two full days after they had corrected my income tax over 2008, presumably based on my April report.

In other words, have I just gone mad or is the tax service not quite right in the head? What am I missing here?

(I returned the form with the box checked that says they already know my income over 2008, which should be sufficient.)

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 10:29 am and is filed under Life blog, Web design + usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.