Tax Department

Phoned the tax department (belastingdienst) today to ask about a baffling letter they sent me. It seemed to say something like the following (in Dutch).

We have transferred your file from Hilversum to Utrecht for one of the following reasons:
- our office has moved
- you have moved
- you have opened a new company
- you have closed a company
- we have changes of staff
- we are restructuring
and a couple of other equally fascinating possibilities.

I called to gain a little precision on the matter, hoping of course that the file wasn't moved for some serious reason like an audit.

After some time a human came on the line and I went straight into explaining what I want - 'received a letter, what is it about...?' He listened for a while, then said 'sorry, we can't speak English, only Dutch, to avoid any misunderstandings'.
I observed that 'I don't speak Dutch, but you're speaking English now, so that language is best to avoid misunderstandings!'
He replied 'Yes, but we're only allowed to speak English to say we can't speak English'.

He nervously laughed in spite of himself, no doubt feeling like a ludicrous medewerker.

I told a colleague, who explained that the motto of the Belastingdienst is 'Leuker kunnen we het niet maken', which roughly means 'We can't make it any more fun'.

Well thanks guys, you certainly made it lots of fun for me today.
A real barrel of laughs.



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