The "Things that annoy me" thread

Last time, man, last time. But this time they are fucking me whichever way they can.

So I declare taxes. Nothing happens for quite some time. Of course the tax office can take all the time it wants. Then there is a letter. They need some more information - specifically some statement about my Swiss income (when I was no longer living in Germany anyway). And I have a deadline of exactly one fucking week. Nevermind that sending a letter from one country to another isn't exactly quick (or cheap). But whatever. So I send them the information. Then about a month later they send me another letter, again with a deadline of one lousy week, asking me to provide a German address to which they can send the tax documents.

YOU FUCKERS ALREADY KNEW THAT I LIVE ABROAD WHEN YOU SENT ME THE FIRST LETTER! How come nobody realized this until later? Apparently the tax office works in a very sequential way: If you encounter a problem, don't look any further but stop all work and contact the person. And if another problem arises later (that is totally unrelated to the first one), simply contact him again and waste more paper, money and time. You morons could have told me these things in ONE FUCKING letter:

"Please send us information regarding your income abroad, and oh btw pls tell us a German address because we can't send tax documents abroad". But nooooo you have to ask for one and then for the other. And then of course there will be another deadline once the Government has decided how much more tax I'll have to pay BECAUSE OF MONEY I EARNED WHEN I WASN'T EVEN LIVING IN GERMANY ANYMORE. And they won't tell me when they send the documents to an address I no longer live at.

Oh and did I mention that I received unemployment money for the two weeks before I moved to Switzerland, and they stopped that right in the middle of the month because now that I no longer live in Germany. But taxes? Yeah we take those even though you left the country.
 
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I don't see the problem.

You are taxed on the 25K, based on the 75K you earned.
And you are taxed on the remaining 50K based on whatever that country deems right.

So on the grand total, your 75K has been taxed only once. But in two different countries, with two different tax percentages.
 
The thing is: the higher the income the higher the tax rate is. Example (just an example, not real numbers, I don't know the real tax rates for the two income brackets):
- When you earn 50k a year you are taxed 30% which means when you earn 25k for half a year the taxation of those 25k sums up to 7500 Euros
- When you earn 75k a year you are taxed 40% which means when you earn 25k for half a year the taxation of those 25k sums up to 10000 Euros
 
The problem is the crazy high German tax rate, that's what.

And my Swiss income was taxed in Switzerland as though I had worked there for the whole year... (Meaning that the tax rate I got in Switzerland wasn't for the fraction of the yearly salary but they just assumed "Monthly salary * 12" and taxed me based on that).

Generally, the more money you earn, the higher your tax rate gets. In both countries.

This is what it looks like in Germany:

steuersatz.jpg



And this is what's happening in Switzerland:

topelement.jpg





(X-Axis: Yearly income, Y-Axis: Tax rate)

Note the slight difference...


Also, to reuse the 25.000 and 50.000 from above (example values):

The rate in Germany is calculated by summing them up, so you get a tax rate of roughly 40% (for 75.000) instead of around 28% (for 25.000). The amount of tax to pay on those 25.000 ? is now 3000 ? higher. 10.000 ? instead of 7000 ?.

The rate in Switzerland is calculated by scaling your Swiss income up to the whole year. Sticking with the 50.000 and assuming that was earned during half a year, this gives you an annual salary of 100.000 and thereby a tax rate of 15% instead of 8% for the 50.000 you actually earned during that year. Giving you another disparity of 3000 CHF which you paid too much because you were taxed for the whole year even though you only lived there for half a year.


Note 1: Even though I was also taxed too much in Switzerland I don't really mind because a) the tax rates are laughably low anyway, and b) the tax system is simpler

Note 2: Looking at these numbers I should probably shut up now...
 
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This is what it looks like in Germany:

steuersatz.jpg



And this is what's happening in Switzerland:

topelement.jpg

That's a wrong comparison. The German picture is the Grenzsteuersatz, the marginal rate dictating how each additional Euro is taxed. The Swiss picture the average tax rate.

Here's a graph with both:

1000px-ESt_D_Tarif_2014_Splitting_120kEUR.svg.png


The dashed blue line is your graph of the marginal rate, the solid blue line is the average rate. Additionally, the Swiss picture mentions "effective" - the German rates are not the effective rates. They're before deductibles such as health insurance or pension payments. The effective tax rate as in "percentage of your grand total gross income" is much lower.
Still higher than in Switzerland of course, but it's not as crass as the marginal rate would suggest.




Edit: Since that's all fairly abstract, here's a rough numbers example.
Say you have a gross income of 50k? in Germany - the marginal tax rate chart would suggest over 40%, the average chart would suggest around 25%. Effectively, the rate is usually less than 20%.
Why? Of those 50k?, you can deduct lots of things like social insurances, so your taxable income might be around 40k. Those 40k get taxed at under 25%, giving you under 10k? in taxes - less than 20% of those 50k.

If you translate that into Swiss numbers, you might make 100kSFr which according to that chart would be around 15% effective tax rate. Less than in Germany, but not that big of a difference.

For very low incomes (10k?/20kSFr) you're taxed less in Germany...
 
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Hello,

Thanks for taking the time to look at my apartment. My name is Sabrina Lemann, i have inherited this apartment from my uncle who unfortunately passed away last year and as i am not looking to move to Germany, as i was born and raised in England. The apartment comes with 1 parking spot,a storage unit where you can deposit my furniture (if you don't like it and you want use your furniture),there is also a linen closet, and most importantly, a new washer and drier.
Pets allowed.
I am looking to rent it for as long as possible, and I hope that you can send me some personal information about yourself. The rent of the apartment for 1 month is EURO 500 all bills included.
Let me know if you hae further interest and i can provide you with more details
Yeah, right, I wonder why exactly the same text (including the typing error in the last sentence, just with a different name) came back to an inquiry for a different apartment three weeks ago...

Fucking scammers, the police even issued a statement that you have to be extra careful if you get an english text back to an inquiry on a real estate agency website, when the contractor wants some kind of deposit for the key so that you can inspect the apartment and so on... :mad:
 
(...)
If you translate that into Swiss numbers, you might make 100kSFr which according to that chart would be around 15% effective tax rate. Less than in Germany, but not that big of a difference.

Maybe it's because I was in the worst possible tax class (young, single and no children), but of the 4000 ? I made a not so cool 2300 ? ended up on my bank account each month. Annual tax return was around 1000 ? (or less than 100 ? per month), so I don't think there was much of a difference between the "worst" and "effective" tax rate, at least not for me.

Now, a much larger fraction of my income* ends up in my bank account, and even though I can't really declare taxes yet**, I still got almost 1600 CHF back for my private retirement plan. So to me it feels like the effective tax is fucking much lower around here.

But maybe we need to separate this discussion into pure income tax and other BS you have or have not to pay which might or might not scale with your income.


*I was about to give you an exact number, but I realized that you could use that to look up how much money I make :p

**As a foreigner you need a certain (high) income or a special permit to declare taxes in Switzerland. I'm still taxed normally, I just can't deduct anything (besides my retirement plan, which is government funded: they simply give 25% of what you paid back).


Note: I talk about my previous income because I was employed by the government, we had collective agreements about our salary, there was absolutely no room for negotiation, and everybody could look up how much money you made.
 
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Of the 1700 "lost" from your German salary, income taxes are probably about half that. The other half are social securities like health insurance, unemployment, pension, whatever.
So while you did lose 42.5% between gross income and what ends up in your bank account, that's not due to the (almost) 42% Grenzsteuersatz you might eventually achieve. Take your tax statement from a whole year, and look for zvE / zu versteuerndes Einkommen - that's what you use to look up your tax rate in the chart I posted earlier. Instead of 48k/52k depending on number of salary months in a year you'll likely end up around the 40k mark for around 10k income tax - 20% give or take. I'm Steuerklasse I with no child-shaped deductibles too, so I'm fairly familiar with these woes... hence the switch to le company car, ease that burden a tiny bit.

No idea how the social securities work south of the border :dunno:
 
Yes you're right, I initially mixed the two up. So correctly I should have said that charges and duties are are crazy high, because not all of it is tax, but all of it is proportional to your income.

Social security is a bit different here. For the first three months you don't get any unemployment money whatsoever. And unlike in Germany were you *have* to notify the Federal Employment Agency three months in advance the government here doesn't really care. Only after a while you get some money, but from what I've read I doubt it's enough to live a comfortable life. Health insurance is 100% private (and does not scale with your income), but there are some government funded retirement plans where you pay 75% of the dues and the government pays the missing 25% (actually you pay 100% and then you get 25% back - so it has to be at least a little bit convoluted as well). Also, your employer usually takes part in another retirement plan where it will pay 50% of the dues and you pay the missing 50%.

There are fewer safety nets, that's for sure. Visiting the doctor costs money which you also have to upfront, and you can only claim part of it back from your health insurance. For instance I have to pay the first 2500 CHF per year in medical bills myself before health insurance starts covering anything at all. In return I get a decently low monthly rate, and since I've been of good health so far, I took that risk. There are other plans in which you pay higher monthly rates but the insurance starts to cover much earlier, and you can also switch between plans without much hassle.

Unemployment money is intentionally painfully low because the government says "hey, if you like money then get a job". There is no "Berufsunf?higkeitsversicherung" (Total permanent disability insurance) - if you have a bad accident and can no longer work in your current job, you have to find suitable work that you can handle with your disability.

And this is probably worse when you move here as a foreigner, but when I got started (looking for a flat, bank account, permit to stay in the country and so on) everyone asked me first if I had a job (and on some occasions: how much money I made). And having a valid contract is actually mandatory to get a permit to stay in the country, so without already having a signed contract you don't even need to apply for a permit to actually live in the country, and without that permit you don't need to apply for anything else. And then you have to start building your own "backup" money in case something goes horribly wrong.

But currently I like it that way. It's much more DIY and less goverment interference or telling you what's best for you. As a young single Switzerland is great, because contrary to Germany (married) couples here pay *more* tax instead of less (I guess the reasoning behind this is that couples usually have less expenses when they share rent, cost for a car and so on). And also, having children is crazy expensive and the goverment basically just shrugs and goes "well, that's your own problem".
 
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Harumph, the windscreen of my car has a crack. Fortunately it isn't in the line of sight of the driver, but I could swear it wasn't there yesterday, I would have spotted it since I drove directly towards the setting sun and didn't notice anything. It's not a chip, it's a crack of around 20 cm where the rearview mirror is so there's no way it can be repaired via smart repair.

Well, what's an insurance for? Even though I have a deductible of 150 Euros it'll be way less than if I paid it completely out of my own pocket...
 
I could swear it wasn't there yesterday

Large temperature changes probably made a small damage blow up :hug:

- - - Updated - - -

It's complicated

Indeed :)


Re: scaling health insurance up with increased income, I'd reverse that - it scales down with lower income. The public health insurance at least stops scaling up at roughly your old income.
Re: paying health cost up front, you get that here too if you're privatversichert. Looking at Grampa's recent medical costs, he had to pay five figures up front and claim an eventual reimbursement by his insurance. That works at certain income levels - both were teachers on old pensions - but would be impossible for many others.
 
As of the 31st of Aug my local pub will be closing down.

The current owner is retiring (for the 2nd time) and I hope the place finds a buyer as it is a rare example of a proper pub where local(ish) beers are on tap, there is an open fire, fights are an exceptionally rare occurrence and you'll never be lacking in people to talk to. To be quite frank it's a travesty that this village will be left without a pub other than the one under the place's last open hotel...

When did we brits become so obsessed with the concept of getting wankered in the shortest amount of time possible and porking a piece or cheap skirt rather than wiling away a nice evening in a pleasant and welcoming atmosphere? Perhaps I'm just old before my time but I fear for the future of this country and feel alienated by many of it's populace...

Also, I am quite drunk and have to run a factory in five hours, fuck my fucking shitty life.
 
I hear that kid, young people just don't go out in the same way they used to, like you said, it's all trendy bars, white shirts and popped collars, getting hammered on some flavor of the month liquer they don't know wich country it's from, then going home with the kind of girl that has 'taking selfies and posting them on instagram' and 'tanning' as her only interests....

Just going to a decent local pub and having a chat, a laugh and shooting some pool or throwing a dart, maybee meeting a normal girl/woman.....you will be hard pressed to find anyone under 35 still doing that here, with the vast mayority beeing over 50, as a result pubs, good pubs, especially in the countryside are dying out along with their patrons.
The ones that survive, well they seem to get taken over by the only people that still do like spending time in pubs it seems: the unemployable, the monstrously stupid, and the general always in and out of trouble riffraff that is just not welcome anywhere else....

My local is dying to, it's suffering from 'taken over by idiots syndrome' for a while now, and now there are problems with the building changing hands and the lease agreement.....I don't see it lasting long.
 
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The "Things that annoy me" thread

The "Things that annoy me" thread

As of the 31st of Aug my local pub will be closing down.

The current owner is retiring (for the 2nd time) and I hope the place finds a buyer as it is a rare example of a proper pub where local(ish) beers are on tap, there is an open fire, fights are an exceptionally rare occurrence and you'll never be lacking in people to talk to. To be quite frank it's a travesty that this village will be left without a pub other than the one under the place's last open hotel...

When did we brits become so obsessed with the concept of getting wankered in the shortest amount of time possible and porking a piece or cheap skirt rather than wiling away a nice evening in a pleasant and welcoming atmosphere? Perhaps I'm just old before my time but I fear for the future of this country and feel alienated by many of it's populace...

Also, I am quite drunk and have to run a factory in five hours, fuck my fucking shitty life.

I think it has to do with the lifestyle people now have over what there used to be. Younger folks my age don't work in factories or other shitty places because they're shitty. They have office jockey type jobs where the most sweating they do is their walk from car to desk.

That's just like, my opinion, man.
 
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It used to be that standard shipping meant "we ship it ASAP but it gets there when it gets there." Now its "we sit around picking our noses, then scramble last minute to get it to you by the promised date."

Case in point, just got the shipment notification... they're sending it out tomorrow via UPS Next Day Air. How does that make sense financially?
 
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As of the 31st of Aug my local pub will be closing down.

The current owner is retiring (for the 2nd time) and I hope the place finds a buyer as it is a rare example of a proper pub where local(ish) beers are on tap, there is an open fire, fights are an exceptionally rare occurrence and you'll never be lacking in people to talk to. To be quite frank it's a travesty that this village will be left without a pub other than the one under the place's last open hotel...

When did we brits become so obsessed with the concept of getting wankered in the shortest amount of time possible and porking a piece or cheap skirt rather than wiling away a nice evening in a pleasant and welcoming atmosphere? Perhaps I'm just old before my time but I fear for the future of this country and feel alienated by many of it's populace...

Also, I am quite drunk and have to run a factory in five hours, fuck my fucking shitty life.
Why don't you take over the pub? Sounds like a step up from the factory job.
 
My local is dying to, it's suffering from 'taken over by idiots syndrome' for a while now, and now there are problems with the building changing hands and the lease agreement.....I don't see it lasting long.
This seems to be accelerated in urban areas where the only pub patrons seem to be the permanently unemployed who have nothing better to do.
I think it has to do with the lifestyle people now have over what there used to be. Younger folks my age don't work in factories or other shitty places because they're shitty.
Speak for yourself, most of the people I know are just glad to have a job...

Why don't you take over the pub? Sounds like a step up from the factory job.
He probably doesn't have the funds to do that.

This. As I recall the pub, guest rooms and owner's accommodation is up for sale at around about ?350k, approx ?300k above the sort of mortgage I can afford. :lol:
 
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