How To Be Swedish

Skatteverket. Sweden’s version of the IRS but way less efficient. This year I filed taxes in two countries, the US and Sweden. Here’s how it went with the IRS: I went online, filled in my tax information, filled in my bank information, hit send. 6 days later my state return was in my bank account, less than 3 weeks later my federal. Great job IRS, I appreciate it.

Here’s how it went, I mean it’s going with Skatteverket: I had to go down to my local bank to file some piece of paper with them that they in turn could file with Skatteverket so that Skatteverket could be authorized to send my money to my bank account. Would’ve thought maybe I could do that online but I guess not. They had a big poster in the bank about how if you did this and filed before a certain date that you would get your tax return back before midsummer so you would have extra money to spend on pickled herring, schnapps and maybe if you had 200 crowns over, a litre of gas. They even had little brochures that you could take home with you, and stick on your fridge to remind you how generous they are and that you’ll be so happy dancing around the midsummer tree with all that extra money in your pocket. I happily took a brochure since my tax dollars were so wisely spent on them.By the way, I did manage to get to the bank during the 3 hours they are open a day, but I’ll save that story for another time.

Fast forward to the day before everything shut down for 5 days for midsummer. I get up for breakfast and as I am slicing a little sliver of cucumber to put on my cheese sandwich, I see the Skatteverket brochure on my fridge. Sweet, thought I. I should double check that my crowns are in my account and then maybe withdraw 100 so I can purchase some ketchup to put on my spaghetti! But alas, no money from the folks at Skatteverket.

Long story short, midsummer was almost 2 weeks ago and no tax return as promised. Hey Skatteverket, where’s my money? You know darn well that if I didn’t pay my tv tax you’d have one of your buddies over at Radiotjänst beating down my door so they could keep funding the useless garbage they fill the airwaves at on SVT1. If anyone reading this works at that inefficient agency, throw a comment on here and let me know when to expect MY money. I’ve already killed 3 cell phone batteries waiting on hold. Maybe next year, scrap the posters proclaiming that we’ll get our tax return by midsummer and use that money to hire a couple more monkeys to process straight forward tax claims.