VAT actually

After several months of wavering between one side of the Channel and the other, I finally bit the bullet and joined the dark side. I am taking the plunge and becoming a Resident here. This means I have to pay VAT, even though my turnover is laughably low.

To pay VAT, you first need a VAT number (stay with me, this gets better, I promise). And indeed you have to pay to receive this magic number (why? Do they calculate it by rolling some kind of solid gold dice?), at a place called the Carrefour d'Entreprises. In practice this means your mutualité. Probably.

I went to the counter and took a ticket. It read 520. The number on the display was 739.

- Excuse me... excuse me!
The receptionist glared at me.
- I don't understand: this says 520 but the counter is already at 739.
- There are different series. Yours starts with 5.
explained the receptionist, as if this were obvious.

My turn came, about half a Tok FM podcast later.

The guy behind the counter was a smiley sort of Belgian. He smiled hello, did a double take and smiled again.
I explained my situation and he started tapping away at the computer.

- You seem tracassée
He observed, oozing charm, smiling some more.

- uhhh non, non, pas tellement...
To be honest, I was pretty damn tracassée. I was about - voluntarily - to sign up for significantly higher social security payments (largely due to a state pension that I will never receive, plus child benefits that everyone in Belgium pays, for everyone else's snot-nosed offspring), with no hope of a rebate for the first three years, not to mention all the administrative burden of a quarterly VAT return. And - thanks to major delays from the last French translation company I worked for* - I didn't even have the 75€ in my Belgian account to pay for the bloody VAT number.
I was coming out of the woodwork, while all my instincts were telling me just to lie low and hope no-one at the Comune came round to check. Here I was, volunteering to pay major extra tax, willingly moving from a small-business friendly economy to a bloody-unfriendly-let's-be-frank-here one. Just the thought of it brought me out in a cold sweat.

The guy was very smiley indeed. He took my passport, copied it, clocked that it was British and came back talking in English. I think they may be trained to do this. I certainly don't mind, and if I then rattle off at  lightening pace in my native tongue, dropping in some juicy idioms on the way, is it my fault if they don't understand me? You want to speak English? Bring it on**.

Suddenly, to my great alarm, I realised that Smiley Belgian Guy was actually flirting with me.

He started to go through the social security form. Name, Surname, Place of Birth... oh no.
I could see what was coming.

- Are you married?
- Oh gosh no.
- Ah ha! slightly too-loud laugh, coquettishly raised eyebrow 'So you are all alone?'

No! No, I have a really, really tall boyfriend who works out a lot.

- Well, yes, I mean, I have a dog.
more laughter
- not here, obviously, at my parents' house. I can't bring her here, she doesn't have a passport. Can you go over this social security thing for me again please?

And - get this - now the guy calls to his colleague: 'Hey, how's your English? Can you come over here a minute?' Even though we had been speaking in French up until the moment I handed over my passport.

- Mais il n'y a aucun souci,  je parle français!
- Vous parlez français?! (why does he seem so surprised?!)
- Je suis interprète quand même ...

This is a phrase I find myself using relatively often; I'm never quite sure how rude it sounds to a francophone... but it normally sorts out the English-speaking problem. He did look a bit affronted though.

- Sign here.

All this above-board business was starting to get to me. A twitch had developed in my left eyelid and the pen felt slippery in my hand.

- Anything else I have to do?
- Just e-mail me your diploma*** and pay for the VAT number.
- And where exactly should I email the diploma to?
- Oh yes... another smile - here's my card.

Very smooth.




* I came this close to adding a hyperlink to their website, but now is not the time nor the place.
** Although I realise I should be practising my French while I'm here. I find a foolproof method for being spoken to in French is very blatantly to read a very large book with a very obviously Polish title.
*** In Belgium you're not allowed to be a self-employed professional unless you can prove you're qualified for it.

Red Belgium

First I started a humorous post about the disastrous city of Antwerp. Then I wrote a draft about friendly bus drivers in Ghent. There was even another in the oft-deleted 'How to flirt with a feminist' series.

But what you're actually going to get today is another Rant.

I just spent the morning flitting among the crowded cubicles of PartenaMut. This is a health insurance entity which seems to sort out all sorts of things like social security for freelancers, health care, etc, etc. I just want to be able to go to the doctor, basically.

Now at the moment my business is registered in the UK, since that's been my home/business address for the past year or so. I have a tax ID there, I pay National Insurance, I even have an accountant of sorts (at least, I have a contact at Tax Assist, which is sort of the tax return equivalent of Easyjet). I'm not registered for VAT, because my business is literally worth about twelve grand a year and because my overheads barely reach a thousand pounds, so it would be an expensive and largely useless gesture which would result in my losing clients.

I fully intend to register myself in Belgium, but not before I have to.

Here's the thing: to interpret in Belgium, I have to have an address in Belgium, otherwise clients are obliged to pay my travel expenses to avoid unfair competition (and I'm in favour of this, since I think interpreters should have their travel expenses paid and this is all very right and good).
However, if I have an address in Belgium, that means that I have to live in Belgium (the police already came around to check) and subsequently pay taxes in Belgium. Since I'm already going to have to pay taxes this year in the UK, I'll end up in the kind of double-taxation situation that the good old U of E is supposed to prevent.

Social security, now there's an interesting concept. I am fed up with paying extortionate social security contributions in other European Union Member States when there's not even the faintest likelihood of my drawing a pension there (not that I'd want to, in Poland OAPs' weekly incomes are minute). Since I graduated in 2006 I've paid contributions in both France and Poland and it looks likely that I'll now have to pay in Belgium as well, and all for what exactly? I still have to pay into a mutual fund to get my prescriptions reimbursed. Call me when there's a pan-European transferable pension scheme and I'll be happy to pay you upwards of 600 Euros per quarter.

Because, yes, that's the lowest social security contribution here.

As a self-employed person in the UK, I currently pay around 30 GBP per quarter in National Insurance. And I can visit the doctor there without taking my credit card or a wad of cash.

In Belgium, the lowest income bracket (11,824.38 per year, don't ask me how they came to this figure), net of income tax, which corresponds roughly to my situation, pays 631.45 euros of social security per quarter - that's four times a year! That would leave that person with 92,98.58 euros in their pocket (have we already subtracted VAT?)!

I'm giving up work altogether. Why on earth do I bother working like stink and learning difficult Slavic languages and quite possibly incubating stress-related heart disease to emerge in my forties, when I might as well sit at home on my derrière and claim 900 euros a month in unemployment benefit? I could spend my days reading Polityka on the sofa, uninterrupted by phonecalls from tiresome translation companies!

I have never lived in a country less favourable to private enterprise (apart from France).

I see a twofold choice ahead of me: I move back to my parents' house and get a job in McDonalds (pray tell me, why did I take out a fortune in loans for an education that has turned out to be largely useless?) or... I move back to Krakow, continue working under my UK registered company and simply pay for cheap private healthcare in zloty...