Law and Government

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Of Taxes and Mail

The irony of socialism is that the less money you make, the better off you are financially. I have this thought every year at about this time, upon filing my taxes. At least this year, it’s in my favour. 🙂 I’m a little behind this year in getting them done seeing as the HR idiot who couldn’t care less about his job person not working in a field compatible with his personality neglected to change my address (after asking me four times for it). Kudos to my post office in Gatineau for sending the envelope on to my PO box, even though my redirect expired a month ago!

If you:

a) are Canadian
b) haven’t filed your taxes yet
c) plan to file them with QuickTax, then I would appreciate it if you bought your software through this link.

Now, let’s see how long and convoluted a process it will be to get the cheques into my grubby little hands. Hopefully, it will happen before May 1st while I am still stationary.

One thing I am learning in this first year on the road is just how important it is to have someone you can trust managing your mail. It has happened several times now that I have asked the UPS store clerk to check my box for a particular letter, with a note that I would try again in a week if it hadn’t, and to have him write me a few days later to let me know that letter was on its way. Getting my mail forwarded isn’t cheap (it has cost me anywhere from 2$ for  my T4s to 30$ when I lived in Oliver because I had to use UPS rather than Canada Post since I couldn’t trust the post office), but I much prefer to pay for a PO box than have family or a friend manage my mail for me. I still don’t know what I’ll be doing next fall, but so far the UPS store is working out just fine.

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It’s That Time of Year

The time of year that makes me regret I ever learned to drive, that is.

It starts in February, when I owe the SAAQ 250$ for my toad’s license plate. It then continues in March when I owe them 100$ for my driver’s license. This year, the party will continue for a third month straight when I will owe them 500$ and change for Miranda’s license plate.

(The non-RVers go: “HA! My house doesn’t need a license plate, nyah nyah!” Rae replies: “My house doesn’t require me to pay school or property taxes, nyah, nyah!”)

There is some stuff going on behind the scenes that tells me that I will be taking up BC residency this coming fall. I’ve been warned that BC means ‘bring cash’ and that their driving fees are more draconian than Quebec’s. I find that hard to believe, but even if that’s the case, income tax will be less, so it will all come out in the wash.

What irks me with the SAAQ is that I can’t just send them three post dated cheques tomorrow. I need to wait for the February notice to appear in my mailbox in Gatineau and have said notice forwarded to me. I will then send said notice with payment attached back to Quebec. In March, I won’t need to wait for a notice since Quebec has come up with a really great scheme for nabbing people for lapsed licenses and imposing gargantuan fines on them: don’t send out notices that the license needs to be renewed and let people remember this for themselves. They do make it easy on us: license renewal happens on our birthday, on either an even year or an odd year, depending on the year we were born. So, on my birthday every odd year, I have to remember to send them a cheque. Gee, thanks, this is always what I wanted to do for my thirtieth birthday!!! Finally, in April, I will have to repeat February’s circus.

I’m just glad that this odd year isn’t the odd year when I need to get a new picture taken for my license. This was actually a factor in my decision to take off as quickly as I did. Since you have to be physically present in Quebec to have your picture taken (ie. you can’t send in an authenticated picture the way you can for a passport application) I wanted that two year buffer to reduce the urgency of making a decision about whether or not to go back. Of course, going back to Quebec never was more than option Z on a list of twenty-six options, but it was there (note that going back to my old job didn’t necessarily entail going back to Quebec other than to actually work since I could live in Ottawa, making that option significantly higher up on the list than taking up residence in Quebec again. Just thought I’d clarify).

I did get ‘happy’ news from Hydro Quebec this week. When I sold my house in the spring of 2007, I was sure that they owed me money, but still paid their huge final bill. A few months later, I got a sizable cheque from them. When I left my rental house in the fall of 2008, I once again got a huge final bill, which I paid. Guess what came in the mail this week? Hint: it’s a shame they couldn’t have made the cheque out to the SAAQ since it would have saved me from having to send it anything in February or March (!). For years now, I’ve dreamt of living ‘off the grid’ and not having to rely on utilities. Now that RVing has given me a taste of what this is like (22$ power bill for January, woohoo!), never having to deal again with Hydro Quebec is another of the many reasons why returning to Quebec is option Z on my list. 😀

(I’ve been told that I can come across as very critical of Quebec. Yeah, so? Just because I come from one of the (not THE, mind you) best places in the world in which to live it doesn’t mean that I have to take what’s wrong with it place sitting down, that I’m not allowed to criticize what’s not working. I vote, so I feel it’s my right to have a say. In fact, I think it’s my duty to not just sit by complacently. At any rate, José Emilio Pacheco sums up my thoughts about Quebec (and Canada, for that matter) perfectly (even though he was writing about Mexico). I’m not sure if my translation from the Spanish is 100% perfect, but it’s close enough:

High Treason

I do not love my country. Its abstract splendour
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten places in it, for certain people,
seaports, pinewoods, fortresses,
a run-down city, gray, grotesque,
various figures from its history
mountains
(and three or four rivers).)

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Mail Improvements

Until I got here, all the parks I’d stayed at preferred that mail not be sent directly to them (courrier deliveries okay, though). So, I’ve been having my mail sent general delivery. This worked out fine until I got to Oliver. The post office there was really bad. Canada Post’s services are notoriously poor, but these guys were the champions of bad service. They misplaced some of my mail, didn’t lift a finger to find it even though I was able to prove that the mail go to their office, and tried to blame me for the error when the package was finally located. I wound up having my mail forwarded directly to the resort by UPS at 30$ a pop!

At Pacific Border, mail can simply be sent to your attention. There are bins at the front desk where mail is sorted alphabetically and guests can go through the appropriate bin to find mail they’re waiting for. Sure, it’s not the most secure method, but, really, how secure is your mail when it’s sitting in a box on your porch anyway?

I continue to be pleased with the service I’m getting from the clerk at the UPS store in Gatineau where I rented a box. Several weeks ago, I emailed him to ask if some mail I was expecting had arrived and if so to please send me all my mail to Oliver, otherwise I would try again in a week. He replied that the letter hadn’t arrived. Two days later, he sent me another email telling me that he’d spotted my letter and my mail was on its way. This is a busy store so talk about service!

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Headin’ for Oz

This morning, I awoke to find Miranda rocking back and forth. It was almost like being on a boat! So, I sure wasn’t surprised when I stepped outside to find the wind gusting at about 30KPH. As we worked this morning in the greenhouses, their plastic coverings flapping ominously, I joked that if the house had wings we could take off. My surly (but sweet!) supervisor actually found that funny. Bitterly cold wind not withstanding, it’s been a beautiful day with sun and a really odd sky colour. I believe it’s called ‘blue.’

As if the day wasn’t surreal enough, we had that coup in Ottawa. I just can’t believe that our politicians, who are of the talking, not acting, variety, conspired together to bring down the current government. Let’s hope the Queen (via the Governor General, of course) signs off on the coalition!

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Not So Trivial… and Trivial

Not So Trivial

Congratulations to the 52% of Americans who voted for change and a president who won’t embarrass them. I love the fact that Bush’s successor’s middle name is… Hussein.

A comparable win in Canada would be by a Native American Neo-Democrat… and we’re so far from that in terms of how the Natives are still viewed and treated here that I know that won’t happen in my lifetime.

But shame, SHAME on those voters in California that de-legalized gay marriage. Electing a black president and taking a giant step back for gay rights cancel each other out. The US doesn’t come off as being any more enlightened than it was before Obama became the president elect. 🙁

Trivial

The nursery job was much better for a couple of days as I was, temporarily, ‘promoted’ to full-time line worker. Wrapping and bundling are much easier now and I’m now learning how to do sorting, which is my favourite task. Sorting is essentially quality controlling the trees and picking out the ones that should not be sent to the customers. I love doing this and can do it for hours on end without feeling bored. Unfortunately, all line workers need to rotate the jobs, so I can’t sort all day. Yesterday I got to sort for the longest shift of the day (2.5 hours straight), so the day went by rather quickly. Today, I was really disappointed when I was sent back to box duty first thing in the morning. I got a bit of a reprieve for an hour or so to haul blocks, but then had to go back to boxes. The morning was interminable! I was so happy this afternoon when I was sent to a line to bundle and wrap.