In the meantime, feel free to give it a read!
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To Whom it May Concern,
Hi there.
I apologize if you are reading this as an everyday labor man/woman whose
job is simply to open letters and pass them on to the right person or file them
or deposit the checks sent in or whatever.
This letter is not meant for you, though you are more than welcome to
read it and even get a good chuckle from it as well—if they let you do that
kind of thing in big important government offices.
If you are the sort of person this letter
is intended for—the kind who wears fancy suits and talks about the sorts of
things educated people talk about—please do not be offended by any of the above
comments. I do not write this letter to
attack you.
As a matter of fact, I am beginning to
realize that I have simply written this letter to make you laugh. In all honesty my original intentions were to
be quite rude and belligerent about owing the government money that they
shouldn’t have given me in the first place, but as I sat down to write I’m
pretty sure I heard a twinkle shoot from my eye and a smile crack my lips. Why?
The hell if I know.
But I digress.
You probably want to know what in the world
this letter is about and whether it’s worth your time to continue reading. I can assure you that it probably isn’t in
the grand scheme of things, but I imagine you’re usually reading normal,
boring, regular government things all day or doing math or something. So perhaps it wouldn’t be the worst thing to
take a five to ten minute break and continue reading. Or two minutes. Maybe you’re a better reader than I
assume. Sorry about that. Maybe you hate reading and by just sending
you this letter I have offended you. How
un-Canadian of me(though may I suggest that if you hate reading you should
really look at getting a different job…I mean…you DO work for the government...not
exactly a position to be found void of tasks that involve reading).
As I was saying, we’d all love to know what
the point of this letter is, and why I’ve used several precious sheets of paper
to get it to you. Though if we want to talk
about a wasteful use of paper, we should probably talk about you(damn, what a
good segue! You’ll see what I mean in a
moment). But in order to talk about you,
we’ll have to start at the beginning of the story…
My wife and I were married in July of 2013
at the very irresponsible ages of twenty and twenty-one. It was an exciting time full of joy,
laughter, and adventures in obtaining a marriage
certificate—license—permit—thing. Because
we were—and are—so irresponsible, we both decided to be in university and
college at the same time as being newly married. This actually turned out to be an advantage
because we got plenty of OSAP grants. In
order to get those grants, however, we needed proof that we were married. In order to prove that we were married, we
needed our marriage certificate-license-permit.
We were told it would take six weeks to arrive in the mail, to which we
both irresponsibly—and somewhat ignorantly—replied, “No big deal!”
Our marriage thing finally arrived in the
mail sometime in October of 2013. The
key thing to remember is that we were married in July of 2013, and we were told
it would arrive in six weeks. Another
key piece of knowledge is this: had my darling wife not paid a visit to our
local MPP(whose name is The Honorable Liz Sandals by the way. Super helpful lady. She is awesome) we would probably still be
waiting!
Now, what does this have to do with an
employee of the CRA? Excellent
question! You get ten points. Points can be redeemed at the home of my wife
and I at any time. They are redeemable
in the form of food, drink, and laughter.
It’s a three in one combo. And no
I’m not kidding. We live at the address
listed above. Basement apartment. Side entrance. If you need help with directions my number is ________________. It would also be nice if
you called ahead to let us know you’re coming.
Moving on.
After all the work of signing roughly ten
separate documents,—some in the church where we were married, some at
home—sending off an envelope to an office in good ole T’under Bay, and then
talking directly to officers of government to get the process sped up and fully
legalized, you would think that someone from the Office of the Registrar
General would mention to someone in the CRA that Jessica Joy Liggins was now Jessica
Joy Golle, and that they need to stop sending her HST returns because only one
person per marriage can get those. But,
lo and behold it did not happen! And
come tax season my wife and I received several letters informing us of several
cringe-inducing sums of money that our irresponsible selves owed to the very
responsible and professional government.
To most, it would be a small amount of money. But like I said, we are an irresponsible
newly married couple of students who sometimes wonder if we’ll make the rent.
But that’s not why I’m writing this
letter. That part doesn’t bother
me. I expect the government not to care
about how responsible or irresponsible my wife and I might be, and I expect the
government to take relatively unreasonable amounts of money from people—no
offense…you just have a bit of a track record with…everyone.
What bothers me is this: my wife’s tax
return resulted in her owing money to the government. Fine.
My tax return resulted in the government owing ME money. AWESOME!
We filed our returns at the same time, and I sent no letters reminding
the government to make sure they sent me my money. Not even once a month. I trusted that, although they are notorious
for finding ways to tax you at every turn, the government honors their debts
when they have them. And you did! For that I thank you.
Then there is the story of my wife’s return(this
is where you get to see the segue about paper).
Almost every two weeks since we have filed our returns, we have received
an individual letter for each amount owing to the government. There were three amounts. As of last week, there is now one.
As previously stated, I am not bothered by
owing the government money; I expect it to happen. But when it is a struggle to find the funds
to pay the amounts off before they collect an amount of interest equal to the
original balance, and when the government takes sweet, precious time in paying
me what I am owed by them, I find it agitating to receive a letter every few
weeks reminding me that I owe our trusted government money. Believe it or not, I only need you to send me
one remittance voucher. The rest got
torn up and thrown in the recycling.
You may or may not be familiar with one of
the most unanswered and over-posed questions in the galaxy. There has even been a movie titled after
it. It is uttered on almost every corner
of the continent by many a disgruntled and uncomfortable child. It is groaned, moaned, whined, yelped,
mumbled and screamed. And the reply of
every parent is almost always accompanied by a long and irritated sigh. The question, as you may have guessed, is
this: “Are we there yet?”
I am writing this letter because I feel
much akin to the sighing, steering-wheel clenching, teeth-gritting parent, who
is doing all in their power to simply not explode every time the question is
posed—which is, as previously stated, about every two weeks. It is with great relief that I am pulling the
vehicle to a halt at our destination and replying to the question with a
bedraggled, “We’re there.”
Along with this letter I have sent the
final payment, and hope to receive no more letters until next tax season, at
which time my wife and I will probably be even more irresponsible and have less
to show for it.
As I said earlier on, dear reader, I wrote
this letter to help you laugh in the midst of a busy schedule and no more. I understand the world is not perfect, and
not everyone sets out to make payments upon receiving the first letter. But I sincerely hope you did laugh, and if
not then I sincerely hope you get a better sense of humor. And if neither of those then I sincerely hope
you breathe a sigh of relief with me for a moment as we can both say, “We’re
here!” (the wording of that is different because it’s a metaphor for life…in case
you didn’t catch it…ok I’m done now).
With all sincerity and the greatest of
loves,
Isaac James Golle
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