Hair tearing and garment rending

I was grumbling about being chased by the tax office here who say I didn't pay enough tax in 2014. I was particularly galled that I had paid an accountant to do the original tax return and now I'm having to pay a second accountant to sort out the job that the first one did. Sometimes the label professional doesn't seem the most adequate for the people we buy services from, like architects and lawyers, or for the civil servants/local government officers who process the documentation supplied by those so called experts.

Anyway the accountant bloke who's trying to sort this out for me went to the tax office. The tax office were unwilling to accept my P60s in English. They had to be translated by an officially qualified translator. Figures vary but of the, roughly, 300,000 Britons resident in Spain about one third live in Alicante province. So what chance do you think there is that the P60 is an unknown document in an Alicante tax office? And a P60, it's not a wordy document. Basically it's two figures. Amount paid and tax deducted. So, the fact that the tax official wants an official translation is the stupid posturing of an idiotic bureaucrat. I didn't have a lot of option though. I paid the 65€.

The crux of this mess is that Government Pensions – army pensions, police pensions, civil servant pensions etc. - are included in some double taxation rules between Spain and the UK. They are taxed in the UK. They have to be recorded on the Spanish tax declaration in a specific way. The documentation to support my claim that I have paid my taxes had to be sent to the tax office by today to avoid a penalty and the accountant needed my signature. He told me that he'd spoken to the boss of the tax office and she had said that it was unlikely that the P60 would be enough proof. The suggestion was that I should get a certificate to say that a Teachers Pension is a Government Pension. I phoned the UK to ask for such a certificate. They don't exist said the woman in the tax office in Manchester. There's a manual, a manual which we share with Spain, about double taxation and which lists the UK Government Pensions. Anyone in a tax office in Spain dealing with double taxation can look in the Spanish version of that manual. She gave me the link to the UK manual and, true enough, there's a list. Again I might have to question the professionalism of the Spanish tax people. Of course it could be that I'm the only person with a Teachers Pension amongst those 100,000 immigrant Britons.

So, as it stands. I've paid the first accountant. I've paid the second accountant. I've paid the translator. The chances are that the Spanish tax people won't accept the evidence. The British tax people say there is no further evidence.

That's why rending of garments comes to mind.

To facilitate proof of conformity

I've got a bit of a tax problem. It started just before the Easter break. The Spanish tax people seem to think that I lied in my 2014 tax return. I didn't. Well, so far as I know I didn't. The whole process is going to be one huge pain in the backside. Part of the ritual of bureaucratic torture that the Spanish state inflicts on its citizens with a monotonous regularity. In the years that we've been here we've bumped into it time after time. We immigrant Brits complain about Spanish bureaucracy and so do Spaniards. Britons complain about British bureaucracy too and I suppose that Ghanaians complain about Ghanaian bureaucracy. I think the difference with the Spanish system is that it is unassailable, unflinching, unmoving and unrepentant whereas the British one is just long winded. The British version is, was, much more open to question in the case of dissent.

The Spanish process starts in one of two ways. Either there is hardly any information. A bill or a fine or a notice that requires Holmeslike deduction to work out what it's about. Much more common though, and this is the case with the tax letter, is that the notification is written in pompous and overblown language using words that nobody uses, a language designed to highlight the difference between the erudite state apparatus and the lowly and colloquial citizen.

Over the years, and without giving it much thought, I can cite examples. I appealed the charge for mains drainage because we don't have mains drains. Appeal denied was the response. No explanation. They did say though that it was a firm ruling that could not be contested.

When I asked our Town Council about changes to the junction by our house they simply didn't reply. I can give you a list of other processes that have been thwarted with the same tactic.

A long, long wait is another common ploy. It took just over two years for the reply to our appeal against being overcharged for our local land tax. To get a building inspector to visit to rubber stamp the paperwork after some major building work took just over eighteen months. There is a four year "statute of limitations" on tax matters, which is why I've got the tax letter now, only two months left or they'd have to forget it. Honestly, 2014? Does it really take five years to get around to checking my piddling tax return? And I have ten working days to reply - or else. I suppose I can expect the same process next year for 2015.

Even if my tax declaration is as honest as I think it is I predict that there will be some administrative wrong that has to be righted. The whole rigmarole will be distressing and will cost me time and money. I will probably need official translations of my P60 and however it turns out I will have no redress. They will never say "Whoops, sorry about that".

It does all become quite wearing.

The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable

Coming in to Huntingdon, past Samuel Pepys place, alongside Hinchingbrooke I was amazed by the number of bunnies hopping around. Millions of the little blighters. Where we live now is much more rural than Huntingdon but I see far less wildlife. Rabbits and more particularly hares are our most frequent sighting but I'm talking one at a time not hordes of them. Lots of people tell us stories of wild boar and one pal was even attacked by one. I've only ever seen them on a game reserve in Andalucia. Although I know foxes, badgers, snakes, hedgehogs, squirrels, mice, stoats and the like are all there I hardly ever see them except as road kill. We have plenty of birds too but I don't see the soaring birds of prey that were so common in Salamanca or the game birds that were always attempting to commit hari kari under the wheels of my car in the wilds of Cambridgeshire.

Hunting though is enormous in Spain. Some weekends, presumably as hunting season opens on some poor species, the sounds of rifles and shotguns in the hills behind our house is more or less non stop. I know lots of dog owners who complain that their dogs cannot be taken off the lead because they are soon challenged by some angry farmer keen to protect nesting game birds or whatever and so protect their sales of hunting licences. Searching in Google for some information I needed for this post I found hundreds of websites offering hunting holidays particularly for big animals. There were, to me, some really sickening pictures of what seemed to be a succession of overweight red faced blokes with the regulation beige waistcoat grinning from ear to ear as they tugged on the horns of some glassy eyed beast.

Just at the bottom of our track there is a rectangular metal sign divided into black and white triangles by a diagonal line. For years I've known that these signs mark the boundary of a hunting area but that was the limit of my knowledge. The other day, when we were walking by one of the larger signs I noticed, for the first time, that it had a little metal tag attached a bit like the old chassis numbers on cars. I wondered what it was so I asked Google and hence this post. The tag plate apparently refers to the local government licence held by the owners of the hunting rights.

It seems there are all sorts of hunting licences available. For instance there is one called coto social de caza, social hunting grounds, which are not singles clubs but places which are designed  for poorer hunters who can't afford the cost of joining a hunting club with high fees. The licences to hunt are allocated to small groups by ballot and hunting is only allowed in these areas on Sundays and holidays. Cotos locales seem to be hunting grounds operated by farmers associations or other community groups and there are cotos privados too which are private hunting land reserved for members. Fortunately for the beasts, there are a range of areas where some species at least are protected or they are protected under certain circumstances. To be honest I got really bored reading the various rules and regulations and decided to stick with less accurate generalisation.

Those black and white signs are there to warn people. Legislation seems to vary from community to community but basically you have to put up a bigger sign which says what sort of hunting area it is and then smaller repeating signs. The big signs have to be at any obvious access point to hunting land and never more than 600 metres apart whilst the smaller signs have to be repeated at least every 100 metres. The idea is that, standing in front of one of them, you should be able to see the next sign in either direction. The repeating signs can also be painted onto handy things like rock crop outs or fence posts as long as the letters are greater than a specified size.

One thing that struck me, as I waded through the legalese of the placement of these signs, was that, as well as the signs for hunting areas, there were several to control hunting in one form or another. Whilst I realise that anywhere that doesn't have a hunting sign is, by default, a safe place for the wildlife it struck me how few of the reserve type signs I've seen. On the other hand I've seen thousands of the black and white triangle signs that give people the right to exercise their blood lust.