Procrastination

Doing our taxes was especially painful this year since it was our first year living overseas, renting our house out, etc. As a matter of fact, we just got around to mailing them this week. Yesterday I called our HR department with a question about taxes, and she asked if I was referring to our Basel taxes. I had to sheepishly admit that since I just finished my US taxes, I hadn't gotten around to completing my Basel taxes, to which she said "you know they're due by Friday, right?". Uh, yeah...I knew that. Sure I did. So last night I had the fun of trying to fill out our local tax form, which is naturally available only in German. The funny thing is that we're actually exempt from most local taxes (which goes over really well with locals and tax-paying expat friends alike), but we still have to dutifully fill out the forms. And unlike many of our fellow expat friends, we're not reimbursed for having an accountant complete our taxes. So that gives us two choices: pony up lots of francs for an accountant to complete forms that ultimately say we owe minimal taxes (thereby defeating the purpose of having a tax break), or try to fill out forms that we don't remotely understand and risk screwing them up royally. Naturally, I opted for the latter option. I just can't help but think that the local tax collectors are going to have a good laugh when they receive our forms, and that we're not going to have such a good laugh when they come looking for us because we filled them out wrong...