Whensday: Tax day

For many people in the US today is tax day. A frantic gathering of papers and numbers and hoping that you have everything correct and on time. Wondering if you will get any money back or have to pay even more. It doesn’t matter what country you live in, these feelings remain the same. Nobody likes paying taxes. 

Some people will expound on how good it is to have services - which are paid by our taxes. Others will point out that the services could be cheaper if we didn’t pay all the taxes. Still others point out the fraud going on which makes our taxes even higher. In any case, most nobody wants to pay taxes. Almost everyone wished they were paying fewer taxes. 

At the moment one of the bigger worries for many is the price of gasoline. For us that means diesel, since we drive a diesel car (you use less for more miles). Looking at the high prices we hear about in the US doesn’t give us much of a shock here. We are paying about $10 per gallon here. And most of that is tax. Which is how some countries are helping the pain at the gas station by lowering the taxes - temporarily. But someone will have to pay in the end. 

As mentioned earlier, we are working through our tax situation here in Belgium. But we are also working through our tax situation in the US. Since we live outside the US we do not have to worry about the April 15 deadline (ours is in June). But we do still have to make sure that everything is ready, correct and up-to-date. 

So for us we will simply enjoy this Spring day. The sun is shining at the minute, but that could change. It is after all, April. The Dutch say, “April does what she wants”. Nothing about flowers and showers, just uncertainty. The beauty is simply evident if you open your eyes.  

And just in case you missed it, these things all happened on April 15. The Titanic sank, Leonardo Da Vinci was born in 1452, Jackie Robinson became the first black baseball player in the MLB, Notre Dame cathedral in Paris caught fire in 2019, the first McDonald’s opened in 1955. Like I said, April does what she wants. 

Taxes

Nobody wants to pay them, but they are a part of everyday life. Jesus told Peter that it was normal to pay and the Bible makes clear that we should pay our taxes. But what do you do when things get a bit complicated? We have lived for the last 30 plus years in Belgium, working in the Netherlands and receiving a good bit of our support from the United States. So which taxes do we pay? All of them. 

We have always paid income tax and social security I the US. We also pay social security in Belgium. But it has been a real blessing all these years to have brothers and sisters who have helped us with our taxes in the US. E.B. Dotson did our taxes (and others) as a service for missions (now the office of Larry McElroy). And what a service this is. It is amazing to have these worries taken from your shoulders, not having to worry about figuring out how things work - because it is confusing. 

You see, we live in Belgium, but receive a part of our funds from the US. Anyone who has lived outside of the US knows about the various forms that have to be filled in (FATCA, FBAR and such). Knowing that your taxes are in good hands, of brothers and sisters who are putting their talents to this service, is extremely comforting. So we are very thankful. 

This is especially important now. This past year the Belgian tax office decided that things have not been as they think it should be. They are only allowed to go back 5 years, so they went back to 2022 and looked at our taxes in Belgium. Their conclusion is that we should have been paying income tax in Belgium, not in the US. This influences how much social security we pay in Belgium as well. 

So now we are looking at back taxes in Belgium, back payments for social security, and continuing to try to figure out our social security status in the US. This can be worrisome or frustrating, but in the end we know that things will work out. Our God knows what we can handle and knows what is going on. That doesn’t mean that it will not happen. It means that He will give us strength to deal with it. 

Thankfully we do not have to worry about anything more than VAT (Value Added Tax) in the Netherlands. And we all have to deal with that in some sense. And as oil prices (gasoline, diesel - which is what we use in our car, gas for our heating) rise exorbitantly, we know that although this may be difficult, we will be able to deal with it somehow. God trusts us to be able to handle what he allows in our lives - with His strength. 

The tax man cometh

The tax man cometh. April 15 is an important day in the US. In the Netherlands it is also in the Spring. In Belgium tax day is in June. Taxes are a certainty in any country or culture and it is no different here. In the Netherlands you even know when your post is from the tax office - it is a blue envelope.  

For us the whole situation is rather complicated. We file income tax in the United States and in Belgium since we come from the US but live in Belgium. In both countries we are considered self-employed for the tax law. We are required to pay social security in both countries as well. Thankfully we have help for our US taxes from brothers and sisters who have always been willing to help missionaries. 

I remember when E.B. Dotson was working for brother McCready. Brother McCready did the taxes of missionaries for free, taking away any worries and in this way supporting and encouraging them. E.B. and Jean were our good friends in church (as they are still) and it has been a true blessing to have this weight taken from our shoulders all these years. Tax law is difficult enough as it goes, but it gets even more complicated when someone lives overseas. 

In Belgium we do not have anyone doing our taxes for us, but things are fairly straight forward. We do not have to itemize. We list the value of our house, its measurements and such. For some years we get a digital printout of what the tax office already figured for us. Then we do even less. But the cares of wondering if everything is done correctly remain a concern. 

We always want to make sure that we are doing things as they should be done. As Christians we have a responsibility to make sure that we are an example to those around us. Jesus also told Peter (and Paul told the Christians in Rome) that taxes are not something to escape. So whether they are fun or not, we want to do what is right. 

As we now also are reaching a certain age, we have thought about what we would need to do for retirement. In Belgium retirement age is 67 - and moving higher each year, it seems. We have social security in both countries, but we are not quite sure how the two countries will work with one another. When one looks for answers, the “normal” answers on a FAQ never quite fit our situation. So we will start looking deeper at what needs to be done. 

In the meantime, and as always, we will trust that God is taking care of things. And we will thank our loving Father for brothers and sisters who are willing and able to help us with this kind of information. 

Whodunit Wednesday: What’s in a name?

My last name is usually either pronounced incorrectly or written incorrectly. If I say “r-ah-b”, people spell it ROBB. If I say “r-aaa-b”, people write it as RABB. If I spell it out “R-A-A-B” people hear “R-A-B-B”. And I have understood that my experience is not that unique. Many people have difficulty in sharing their name and how it should be spelled. 

My last name is German. It originally comes from the word for ‘raven’ which is why this blog site is called the Raven’s roost (the place where all the ravens sit). The double “a” in the middle is very common in the Dutch language, so the name is often spelled and pronounced correctly here. But then my first name gets the treatment, being uncommon here (and usually only getting one “t” at the end). 

Names can be very important. But the spelling and writing down of names has not always been a thing. Until there is some sort of registration or formal record of names, spelling is really not that important. Even after we have records, misspellings are common and cause all sorts of interesting stories. But keeping good records can help in some things, especially in collecting taxes. 

In the Bible we read about Joseph and Mary having to return to their home town to register for the census. This was held so that taxes could be levied. So, as we have always suspected, taxes have been around as long as death (the other certainty in life). But in the area of Maastricht, it was Napoleon who brought some of this “certainty”. 

Maastricht has always been a strategic city. It is at the crossing of the river Meuse and has always been a fortified city. The Romans first settled here with a barracks and soldiers. The Spanish and the French fought each other constantly in this area (d’Artagnan died here fighting for the French against the Spanish). So it is no surprise that Napoleon also took an interest in the area. 

Of course Napoleon took an interest in the whole of his realm. And he brought a formal administration to the areas he conquered which did not have such. This would make it easier, in the end, to collect taxes. So in Maastricht, where you might have simply had “Peter on the Straight Street” before, you suddenly needed a last name for Peter. All people had to be registered - according to the way Napoleon wanted it done. 

This brought about some very interesting names in Maastricht specifically. You see, the people of Maastricht are rather proud. Maastricht is not much more than a large farming town, but they consider themselves much more. After all, the Romans settled the area. And it is the provincial capital. So they are much more than simply a large farming town. 

This meant that when the French under Napoleon starting forcing people to give last names, some of the people thought it might be funny to “kick against the goads”. They gave silly, strange names. The French had no way of knowing if these were typical local names and registered them. 

The French had the last laugh though. Now, centuries later, there are whole families stuck with a name that some ancestor thought would be a good joke against the French. And the spelling has stuck as well. And the taxes are still owed. 

The French under Napoleon brought some order to administration throughout the area. But with order comes the inevitable red tape and bureaucracy. This has never left (as we all know about red tape and bureaucracy). And in the end it doesn’t really matter if you are called “angry fly” (what became a fairly common name here) or “raven” as long as the government can find you when they want to.