was debating with myself whether to put this into things that annoy me or here... but I think this is very much a first world problem after all
currently trying to piece together my application for the state parental allowance, which in itself is quite a luxury first world thing - that's why I put this here basically.
how this works? if I go on parental leave, for up to 14 months, the state will compensate my resulting loss of income by some 65% or some such, up to a maximum of 1.800€/month. Nice!
The problem? the application and shit you have to hand in in order for them to properly assess whether you're eligible and how much money you're supposed to get! so, next to the 6 page application I have to hand in:
- my income settlements for the 12 months before birth of the child (because that's the relevant average net income they look at - and they need every single one of them, even if e.g. 8 slips already put you above the 1.800€ limit - PROCEDURE, PEOPLE)
- my tax assessment of the year before birth (in order to assess general eligibility - since you only get this up to 500k€/year per family)
- confirmation of my employer that i will be going on parental leave for the corresponding timeframe.
so far so good - we're up to (in my case) some 27 pages of appendices now.
but wait! In my case, I'm going on full parental leave for two months and another two months of part time (same "loss of income logic" applies). this is already hard enough to put into the application as it is, because somehow they seem to think either you do only full PL
or part time, not one after the other (but I think I made this work maybe???), in addition they now want even more:
- confirmation of my employer about part time parental leave.
- estimated (net) income during said part time parental leave, confirmed by my employer.
- confirmation about any holiday I will be doing during said part time parental leave (probably so they can cut my compensation accordingly)
this isn't a lot of additional paper, but we're at a full 36 pages of A4 paper now, that I will of course have to send in via snail mail, because everything isn't safe and secure or whatever bullshit? Ugh... Yes they also offer an online tool - which at the end presents you with a PDF to print, sign and send in. german digitalization - wohoo. also it takes ages to get all those ridiculous confirmations. My employer, despite being part of a 1000+ people group, doesn't do official holiday confirmations at all, so I hope they'll just accept a printed e-mail (!!!) from my boss about this crap?
... so yeah, a ridiculous amount of paperwork to prop up a system which I feel is socially unfair anyway! it would be so much easier if they were to just ditch the whole "loss of income" part and made it e.g. a 1.500€/month flat allowance for anyone who goes on parental leave! that'd help low-income families more than the crazy shit that happens now, probably wouldn't hurt any higher income families either and would make the entire process so much easier (and cheaper - heck, make it 1.800€/month for everyone and in the end they'd probably still save money overall). have part time simply pay out half or whatever, i dunno. but that'd be way too easy and would probably put hundreds of clerks out of a job... so it has to stay complicated...