Miscellany

Insane Rant about Money and the IRD

Watch out - the volcano erupts. That's what I feel like - a volcano that has blown its top. I am incandescent with rage at present and I don't think I can afford to stay in New Zealand. First off, I am 25,000 miles away from my money. My teacher's pension was not paid on 29th August, or, rather, according to them (in the UK) it was paid but has not yet arrived here. Though Western Union can transfer money immediately by quoting a country code, a sort code, and an account number, this is obviously beyond some of the banks here, so my money comes from TP (Teachers' Pensions) in Darlington to the ANZ Bank here and then to my Kiwibank account. Legally, it is due on 29th, but my argument that they should therefore transfer it earlier so it is in my account by 29th has fallen on deaf ears. Though it has (eventually) turned up every other month that I have been out here, now it seems to have got lost somewhere in the ANZ Bank system. So the answer arrived at by TP is to 'suspend all future payments until this is sorted out'. So having waited for two weeks to get no money, I am supposed to hope they can sort it out in the next two weeks - which they won't, so as well as being without August money I will also be without September money.

I hate banks and money and bureaucracies. All my life worry about money has been a huge grey stone weighing me down and preventing me from being happy and stable. We can talk about bipolar/ manic depressiove/ borderline personality disorder: the truth remains that the men in my life didn't care enough about me to take care of me in spite of myself. Glen never paid more than twelve pounds a week towards Gina and Andria's maintenance even when he was earning 70,000 pounds a year. He also kept me waiting six years for a divorce where he could be the innocent party. I helped Allen fulfil his lifelong dream of being an artist and his reward was to let me be the breadwinner, to take half of the Stafford house bought with my superannuation (cutting my eventual pension in half). He took half again of the Telford house contents (after a failed reconciliation which ended when Jeremy took a knife to Andria) and a big payout so he would not get lifelong maintenace from me. Malcolm wanted to 'support me being a writer' and so I gave in my notice from the best job I ever had (Lecturer II, Aylesbury College) and before I'd served my 3-months notice was in such a panic about what we'd live on that I ended up going back to work at the shit end of the market as a supply teacher and fill in. I allowed myself to be blackmailed when my back went and eight other teachers at Burlington Danes took early retirement and a redundancy pay-off - which I was entitled to - because the bitch in charge, Cynthia Amos, now dead of cancer, and aren't I glad about that - I hope she died in agony - told me if I did, she'd sack Birgitta and shut the Learning Resources Centre. Yes, I was wrong to trust these men, and yes, I was wrong to listen to her - Birgitta was not my problem, nor was it my fault if the students were without an LRC.

I known I did it to myself, and in the long run, I can blame no one else for my folly, and yet there is a deep, deep anger there that no one cared enough or put me first. Am I so eminently unlovable? I am no better and no worse than hundreds of other women whose husbands fall over backwards to work with them and not against them.

The term 'reciprocal' is used to describe what happens when a UK citizen becomes a permanent resident in NZ. Reciprocal in my dictionary talks of an equal exchange. Excuse me? Over there, I am a pensioner at 60 and qualify for pensioner benefits, including free medical and dental treatment, free chiropody and physiotherapy, which I need for my damaged feet, housing benefit and invalidity benefit. Over here I pay out and pay out and pay out - $175 today when another filling fell out of my tooth, $65 every time I see the doctor, $350 for an X-ray on my ankle to determine why it is not healing as it should, $600 for a CAT scan ditto ... All this I have taken in my stride, accepting I will be poor until the day I die and not letting it interfere too much with my daily pleasures. My pension which I paid for over 35 years of full stamps was frozen the day I became a permanent resident at the rate it was then: in the UK I would get annual index-related increases (this freeze happens because NZ has not signed the international social security agreement - which saves them $3.8m. a year.) I have already in the 2 years I've been in receipt of it seen my pension drop from $1750 a month to the latest figure of $1260 a month. That is a substantial loss to bear and my expenses do not drop - they increase with inflation.

Then half an hour ago I was with the IRD expecting to get a tax rebate I'd been told would be between $800 and $1200. Instead, I have come out with a tax bill of nearly $3000. Why? My UK pensions are 'taxed at source'. However, because in fact if you add both of them together they still do not reach the maximum at which you begin to pay tax in the UK, no tax is deducted. Aha! If I haven't paid tax on then in the UK, then the NZ can insist that I pay tax on them here. If only $5 a month was paid in tax in the UK, that income would be tax free here - it is taxed as 'world income' and therefore can only be taxed in one place. It is taxed in the UK - but doesn't rate tax.

So here I am, stuck with a huge tax bill for what? For bugger all. I get no medical or dental cover - again, I've paid NHS contributions in the UK for over 30 years and get nil benefit from that. I get no post-operative ACC cover for my damaged ankle (the major health cost I have to bear) because the accident did not occur in NZ, and I get no personal allowance - that minimum amount you are allowed to earn before you pay tax - because in NZ you pay tax on the very first dollar you earn each year and the government gives you ACC cover in return - which I don't/can't benefit from.

MOT is WOF over here (warrant of fitness) and has to be done every 3 months on old cars - the only sort I can afford - @ $55 + any repair costs. Registration of your car is done every six months @ $172. My rent is $520 a month, electricity about $200, telephone about $100, and GST of 17 per cent on everything you buy.

Well, today I have had it. All I wanted to do was crash the car on the way home and I have decided when my next big payment comes in on or about the beginning of October to buy a one way ticket and go home. I am happy here and I will miss the Littlies like mad and I can't even begin to think of anyone who will love Blossom and Minnalouche like I do, but basically I want to be able to pay my bills and keep myself without this constant stress. Again, I will have to 'start over' - a hologram phoenix feebly flapping my wings as I try once more to rise from the ashes.

I'd like to form a Grey Panther movement and blow up the Beehive in Wellington. I am so upset I want to slash myself with a knife or tear my hair out or do a bungee jump without the rope. I do not deserve this. I do not.

posted by Jenny Argante @ 4:24 AM