The problem with not writing for a long time is that after awhile so many things build up that you have no idea where to start. There's life developments, job developments, tech developments, poker developments. I guess I may as well start with the life developments, then see what else happens.
So, let's start with my latest FML moment. A bit of backstory:
After I transferred to Munich, someone forgot to mention to payroll that I was no longer working in the U.S. As a result, I was getting paid in both the U.S. and in Germany. I figured this out pretty quickly and did the appropriate thing: I notified H.R. I pestered H.R. after each U.S. paycheck until they told me (nicely): it's being dealt with, don't worry, now piss off. A month after that, I told my boss, who really set off the alarms and fixed the issue.
Since I'm a responsible person, I figured that my employer would eventually figure out the mistake and ask for the money back. The money had been going into a bank account in California, which had remained our principal bank account even after moving to New York, and had been used to pay all our bills / mortgage / etc in the U.S. After moving to Germany, the bank account never got used, so I kept the money in it (along with some savings that was there before the debacle started), untouched, waiting for my employer to ask for it back. See how responsible I am? I didn't get any indication from them, but then again it's a very large company, and I assumed - no, I KNEW - that someone, eventually, would notice, and I wanted to be able to say I did the right thing and even tell them "just take it right back from the same bank account". Flash forward to 6 months later...
Right before taking our vacation to the U.S., we (Clau and I) realized that there was a potential problem with our ATM cards for our bank in New York. As a backup procedure, I grabbed the ATM card for the California bank and went online to transfer some money from the savings account to the checking account (again, to avoid touching the mistaken payment money). To my horror, I discovered that both the checking and savings accounts were empty. Heart racing, I called up the CA bank and asked what had happened. After quite a few phone transfers, it was determined that the great state of California had seized ALL my money for reasons unknown.
Some phone calls later to the CA FTB (franchise tax board), I was told that I had not filed a CA tax return for 2005, which was the year we sold our house in CA, after a year of renting it out and deciding it wasn't worth it. Apparently, if you sell a house in CA, you are required to file a CA tax return for that year, regardless of your state of residence for the year. Ironically, Clau and I filed our taxes with H&R block that year for that EXACT reason: we didn't know what we were required / supposed to do, and we wanted to make sure there were no screwups.
(Side note: H&R block are a bunch of idiots, set up for people who are too stupid / lazy to fill out a 1040. Don't give them anything more complicated than that or they WILL screw it up. They supposedly offer a warantee that will reimburse you if you get audited and found wanting; I'd be curious to see if that warantee has EVER been successfully used. Also, their "rapid refund" service is just a patently evil scheme designed to further screw folks in need to the wall. In retrospect, I should have just fronted the cash and time and gone to a real accountant. Lesson learned.)
Getting back to the story, apparently someone in cash-strapped California had noticed the house sale from 2005 and decided that CA was entitled to taxes on the SALE PRICE of the house, which of course added up to a boatload of money. So, they took all the money from my bank account (for which the bank charged ME $100, but they were at least kind enough to subtract that from the bank accounts before giving the remainder to the CA FTB).
The folks at the CA FTB were surprisingly nice, and cheerfully told me that all I had to do was file a retroactive tax return for 2005, and they would happily send me a reimbursement to my address (in Germany!) after receiving my return. Needless to say, I filed the return post-haste and sent it certified receipt mail from CA while I was there.
What the CA FTB failed to mention is that they take their sweet time with retroactive returns; I've called once every two weeks and each time the response is "we haven't even opened it yet. Check back in a month." Somehow, I have a feeling that if there had been a check enclosed in the return, they might have gotten to it sooner.
I really don't like this, of course, but then again, the money was just sitting there waiting for my employer to eventually ask for it, so in this case I'll survive. Of course, imagine if that wasn't the case? What if that were still my main bank account, as it was when Clau and I lived in New York? We would be all kinds of screwed - Clau's salary wasn't enough to cover all the bills - we wouldn't have been able to make our mortgage payment (ironically to the same bank that couldn't hand our money to the FTP fast enough). All our family and friends would be receiving candy bars for Christmas gifts. Seriously - how can the CA FTB do that and get away with it? Particularly when everyone agrees that I ultimately should be receiving the money back?
So, that was bad enough: here comes the kicker. A week or so ago I get an email from one of our neighbors in our old apartment building in NY, saying that a FedEx package had come for me. Turns out that my employer had, after all, figured out quite a while ago that they had been paying me twice, and had been sending letters to my OLD address (despite my having updated my address in all applicable areas in my company) asking for the money back. The FedEx envelope contained a "final warning before collections" letter. And now, of course, the money is not there. F.M.L.
For those who might be concerned, it's all gonna work out OK. My company's payroll dept has been really nice about the whole thing, especially after confirming that they had, in fact, been sending the letters to the wrong address. I was also quick to point out that, had they sent the original notices to the correct address, or via email, or given me a phone call (I still have the same extension), they would have received the money. Now, they just have to wait. It has, however, cost me a lot of time, which fortunately I have an abundance of lately. More on that in subsequent posts.
