The weather here has been crap. Rainy, a little snowy and all around gloomy. We had high hopes that Spring was right around the corner when Brenda's parents were here but that has proven not to be the case. We keep hearing about this beautiful Spring that Frankfurt usually has but I'll believe it when I see it.
In keeping with the grey skies we received a grey letter on Saturday. Its actually not all that uncommon considering the opera house uses grey envelopes and we get pay stubs and other such information from them on a regular basis. However, this letter was grey in many respects. Allow me to paraphrase its message.
Dear Ms. Klinkert,
We won't be paying you this month.
Sincerely,
Frau So-and-so
Frankfurt Opera
Ok, so the letter said a little more than that. It also explained why Brenda wouldn't be getting paid for a month's work. In order for me to explain it, though, I'm going to have to give you some info on the tax system in Germany. Here goes...
All working people in Germany are in a given tax class numbered 1-6 depending on their situation. As I understand it, if you are single with no dependents then you are in tax class 1 and are taxed at around 50%. If you are married and both people work then one person (generally the higher income earner) is in tax class 3 and is taxed at around 40%. The other person is in tax class 5 and is taxed at around 60%. People are mailed their number on a tax card at the end of the current year for the following year. They are then supposed to give the tax card to their employer in the new year. That's all I know about the German tax system and I wouldn't take any of that as law if I were you.
So our little we-can't-pay-any-of-our-bills-this-month problem fits in like this. Our tax class numbers had been reversed on our tax cards which means that Brenda was in the higher taxed group (5) and I was in the lower (3) when it was supposed to be the opposite. We noticed this and got the problem corrected before we turned the tax cards in to the opera house a couple of weeks ago. What we didn't realize, however, was that our recently corrected tax cards would not take affect retroactively.
Thus far in 2009 the opera house had been operating under the assumption that Brenda's tax class was the same as 2008, tax class 3. When they got our tax cards last week they realized that according to the cards they should have been taxing Brenda at tax class 5 for the first 3 months of 2009. To fix this mistake they would have to take her entire next paycheck to make up for the unpaid taxes for the first quarter of 2009.
Does that make sense? Well even if it doesn't I applaud you for reading all of that. My main question all along was why did the city change our tax classes from 2008. Brenda was a 3 then and I was a 5 so why would it all of a sudden switch? We talked to several different people and the best theory we could come up with is that someone assumed that since I'm a man I must have been the primary income earner. Nice, huh?
We went to the opera house on Monday and spoke with a woman in finance. We explained our situation and she was very kind and empathetic but said that basically we were screwed. Legally the opera house couldn't do anything to help us and we could try our luck at the city office but she doubted anything would come of that.
We have been doing pretty well communicating in German lately but the idea of explaining this in German seemed overwhelming so we enlisted the help of our friend Michael. He agreed to be our spokesman at the city office and so on Tuesday we all went down there. Michael explained our problem to the guy at the information desk and he said that it was unfortunate but doubted that anything could be done. He gave us a number, though, and we went up to meet with some other person.
Michael explained our situation to this new person who went to talk to someone else who in turn went to talk to a 3rd person. The 2nd person came back and said that we should have fixed this when we got the tax cards at the end of last year. Michael explained that we were new in Frankfurt, we didn't have any idea how the system worked and reminded them that someone in their office had made the mistake of switching our tax classes from the previous year. To my great surprise they said all they needed was a fax from the opera house saying they were ok with the change and then they'd issue us new tax cards that covered all of 2009. Problem solved.
So that was our week. We laughed, we cried, we entertained the idea of living on the street but in the end it all worked out. Gianni Schicchi opens next week and I'm really excited to get it up and running. Until then we'll be in rehearsals and searching for sunshine and warm weather. I hope you have a great weekend!
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