Yeah, I'm the tax man
by Jim Curtiss

Strangest thing happened to me the other day.

I was working away at the computer when the doorbell rang, so I shluffed to the front door in my slippers and pressed the intercom.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Curtiss,” the metallic voice said. “I'm from the tax bureau."

"Pardon?"

"I'm from the tax bureau," he repeated.

"Uh... Ok. I'll be right down."

What is this all about, I wondered as I put on my shoes and walked downstairs.

I opened up our building’s front door and standing there trying to look tough was a muscled kid, tanning booth brown, wearing a tight, short-sleeved shirt.

I puffed up my chest. "Yeah?"

He was holding a huge leather case like the airline pilots carry, which allowed his arm to be continuously flexed.

"Mr. Curtiss, I'm from the tax office and blah, blah, blah,” he said in German.

I didn’t understand anything after he’d said tax office.

"Uh... I'm sorry, I don't understand."

He gave me that look – the one where he clocked me as a foreigner – and then he handed me an official-looking document from the tax bureau.

"Can you read German," he sniped.

"Yes, of course," I replied as I snatched the paper from him. I read over the official-looking document and didn't understand most of it.

I handed the paper back to him testily. "Yeah, and?"

"You must pay this money, Herr Curtiss, plus a penalty,” he said. “Do you have it?"

"Wait. I have to pay you right now?"

"That's right."

"And you're with the tax bureau?"

"Yes."

"Do you have any identification?"

He sighed deeply, obviously peeved, but hey – should I pay every random guy who comes to my house claiming to be the taxman? I don't think so.

His ID seemed legit, so I asked him, "I have to pay you how much? And why?"

"Forty Euro. For your taxes.”

He’d had enough of me already.

“So do you have it?"

"Uh... I don't know..."

"It would be bad if you don't."

"Uh-huh." I still didn't want to believe the situation I was in, but he was legit so I invited him up.

"So this is all about my taxes," I asked as we walked upstairs.

"Yes."

'But I paid my taxes last month."

"Yes, but not all."

"Uh-huh. You have the documents for this?"

"Yes."

We got into the apartment and I led him into our living room – and then I remembered that it looked like a clothes and paper bomb went off in there. My wife had just overhauled our bedroom and the spillover made its way to a pile by my desk. A pile of shirts awaited someone to give them ironing attention. My desk was littered with papers. There were dozens of CDs on the floor by the player. Our laundry was drying on the rack. Dead flies languished on the floor awaiting the Hoover Treatment.

We sat down at our rotunda table and I tried to make sense of the situation.

"Ok, now could you tell me again what's happening here?"

He took out a file and showed me that I hadn't, apparently, paid all of my taxes for the first quarter of the year. I'm scheduled to pay a certain amount by a certain date and I missed the deadline by one day. Big deal, I thought. But then, two days after I had paid my taxes in full (a significant amount, mind you), a letter arrived saying that I owed this full amount plus a 40 Euro late fee.

Being me, and since I had already paid, I threw the letter in the garbage and since I’d never received a follow-up letter, I thought the issue was dead.

But now here was Mr. Savage Tan come to collect these 40 Euro. As it began to fully dawn on me that he was some thug from the collection agency, and since I knew I had the money, I asked him what would happen if I didn't pay him.

He said a word I didn't understand, so I asked him to write it down.

"Pfändung" was the word.

I ran for my dictionary and looked it up.

"Seizure" was the translation.

I looked up at him.

"So I don't pay you, and what – you take my television?"

"For example," he shrugged, looking around in a what-else-they-got kinda way.

I blinked at him.

Shaking my head, both amused and scandalized, I said, "That's unbelievable.”

He shrugged. “That’s how it works here in Germany if you don’t pay your taxes, Herr Curtiss.”

And so I paid him the 40 Euro penalty, he gave me a receipt, and I walked him downstairs. If there's a moral to the story, it would have to be this: don't mess around with the German Tax Bureau. They know where you live.