KitNKaboodle - zgberlin

First Quarter Blues and Uncle Fritz is not handing out the Towels

taxman

There are some of you living in Berlin that have jobs. Kit and I mean, real jobs, the kind that comes with a Lohnsteuerkarte. They are the jobs that constitutes the Holy Grail for us ALIBs (Ausländer Living in Berlin) and something we all at one time or another have pined after, "contracted employment" (Angestelltenverhältnis).

"Angestellt me, Baby! and I am yours for Life" ... and so it would seem.

For those of you are new to Berlin and/or German ways, being "angestellt" is a ticket to health insurance, retirement benefits, those "glorious " vacation benefits, Weihnachtsgeld, and - if you hit it big - maybe obtaining the status of a civil servant (Beamter or Beamtin).

So, for you who have got "angestellt" and have passed Boardwalk and collected your $100, take a hike. What's coming won't be for you (Kit says tell them that's because of the German Law, not because we're feeling feistier than usual).

Now... who is still with us?

Babysitters, Piano Tuners, Translators, Buskers?

And others (us,too!) who fall into the category, "Freiberufler"- affectionately referred to as "those that lance freely."

A big group of folks, eh - as less and less of us get "angestellt."

Yet, this also an expanding group of people, especially among folks who start their own businesses and are required to come to grips with an animal known as the "Umsatzsteuer-Voranmeldung" and its more lethal subspecies, the "vierteljährliche Abgabe." These critters have to be dealt with. The vierteljährliche Abgabe - or quarterly sales tax declaration - squares off with the calendar.

This year's first quarter became history March 31st.

The declaration is due 10 days later, with payment, danke schön!

For those of you who are old hat at this, filing German tax forms, more than likely you have signed a separate declaration that allows you to have an automatic extension of the deadline. The good news for those new at this game - and will probably miss the April deadline - it won't be before the middle of May before Uncle Fritz's Finanzamt boys will even think about coming over to visit for more than a klatch with tea and cakes.

This year, though, there is a new wrinkle. Fat chance the Finanzamt will make it easy for you to get hold of the necessary forms.

In fact, the push here is to get you to do your basic tax dealings, filing & payment, on-line, regardless if you have an internet account, let alone a computer.

Sure, they throw a CD your way, with all you need to get busy heating up the phone lines and praying that whom you are spouting your account information to is really them, the Finanzamt, and not a high-jacked site cashing you out from a dilapidated parking lot somewhere south of Tehran.

But, Babe, that's if you can get these files on their gratis Windows ONLY CD to open.

The most recent disk given to you by the Finanzamt (ElsterFormular 2006/2007) does diddley on Macintoshes. God help those Taxpayers who are still sitting staring into their Amiga 1200s, playing Pong.

Folks... Fret Not! Kit and Kaboodle are here to help!

We paid a recent late hour visit to our local Finanzamt in Neukölln, suspecting that at 2 am we wouldn't expect to find many Taxmänner and Taxmadchens burning the midnight GAZPROM lamps, seeking out tax cheaters and other sinners. In a discarded, rumpled Netto plastic Tüte we struck pay dirt. Some righteous, sympathetic soul had photocopied the original form. As luck would have it, from the 5 or 6 copies we found, we were able to retrieve copies that were spared the enrichment of spilled coffee and chewed-on pistachio shells.

As a public service, we have arranged for the kimosabes at RapidShare to make this form available for downloading:

http://rapidshare.com/files/21914460/KitNKabStr07.zip

Folks, that does it for 2007. The form can be used till the end of the year.

As to next year... hmm, to get at next year's form, we might need to take a page out of the Good Book and take our cue from Jesus, who - as related in the Scriptures - dined with his Taxman (Matthew, 9:9).

KitNKaboodle 01.04.2007

TEMPELHOF: The Mud above, the Sky below

If we were able to vote here in local Berlin elections, the joke would be on us. Our benighted Mayor - so appealing to those who had in another era a chance to vote for Harvey Milk - has become weak kneed over the closing of the Templehof Airport.

What gives Wowi? Where is your leadership on this issue? Are you still in favor of an "Open Berlin where everybody gets his chance."

His words, not ours - check out his web site: ( http://www.klaus-wowereit.de/mein_berlin/)

And, poking a finger at Templehof... do you still advocate, "Today it is a matter of doing everything, so that economy of Berlin further grows and has everybody a little bit of it."

Leadership, Babe - that's what these two non-voting Berliners want. Can you get your self out of the muck of local politics and get back to reaching for the skies?

Need inspiration... have a go at this down load: http://www.sendmefile.com/00511043

KitNKaboodle - Berlin March 8, 2007

Kit and Kaboodle...

Hey, we are two regular types of guys who go through life, gliding through and being cool.

Getting by fine with the simple pleasures Berlin has to offer. A good brew now and then, the monthly Pizza gorge, playing the same lottery numbers since July of 84 with the hope that the winnings will go to re-opening the Klick....

We're just like other left over Amis in Berlin who sit somewhere behind Uncle Fritz and in front of Uncle Sam, stranded by choice in a very livable city.

You know us - there's enough of us around, have been since after the War - ah, The Second World War.

We ride the buses, shop at Aldi, pretend to read the BZ in public places. Some of us even own businesses. We side step problems, turn off from political arguments, have no Stammtisch, let alone a singular Berlin hangout, and generally give way to let others get their turn to ride high horse..

We are your silent, easy going neighbors - good neighbors, despite our awkward language skills and often displayed comical non-European ways of doing things.

So it is that when Frau Schneider needs help with her bedpans, we're the first to be there.

Or, Filberto, the neighborhood Picasso - when he needs a side of house painted for his interpretation of a larger than life One Way Sign, hell, we volunteer to hold the ladder.

And then, Silki, coming off a 3-dayer with a band of Dresdener bike freaks... who's the first to be there to ease her into the tub and bring tea?

Us. Kit and Kaboodle. Down home, regular guys living in a sea of Europeans, African, and Asians. We are "Everymen, Typus Americanus Lite."

Like he said - this is Kit writing - you see here two guys, regular, no real beefs to grind with anyone... sort of... most of the time.

But you know how it is, here living in Berlin in this multi-culti, tipsy-topsy, what ever, egalitarian City with the sodden past.

You see things happening, out on the streets, in the subways. People loosing it and bozos and knuckleheads running amok. Live and let live hits the sewers.

Hey, listen up: pardon me if I step on some toes, but - see - it often comes down to this - my fellow Berlin Humo-Saps can get down rightly rude. Displaying no respect, no care, no consideration, no creativity, and - certainly - no Kinderstube.

Gets us steamed - Kaboodle and I - really steamed. And with no place to rant and vent, the steam hardens, gets stuck, down where you can't get at it. Like last year's Jube Jubes hardening in the gurkel.

Wheels fail to turn.

And then you say goodbye to that exalted Serenity of Dis-Lodgement and Re-Alignment you need to keep the beam rock steady.

In short, you get flippy, bitchy, and arrogant. And you start to see the others reflected in your own image. When this happens, Buster, you are about to book your place on the bus with the other knuckleheads.

We are not ready to take that ride. We got a home now where we can vent.

We got "here" and the Ugly American in us may just get uglier.