Lately, I have been dealing unusually much with government forms, paperwork filings and officialdom.
In an odd way it reminds me just how relatively primitive the operations of government are here in the USA.
It all started with needing to put the finishing touches on our annual income tax return — even though I have an extension that is good until October 15th — because I needed to get it done because I needed to use a copy of that income tax return to take to the local tax assessor's office for the purpose of getting a reduction on property taxes.
Property taxes in our area are insanely high these days and property values are just completely out of control meaning that property tax payments end up (monthly) costing as much as a rent payment. Which is ironic, especially if you own your house outright!
But at least the state of Washington has a system by which — if you are over the age of 65 (which I am now) and your income falls below a certain level — you can get an exception for some of your property value and taxes due, presumably on the basis that if you're 65 and older you no longer have kids in school you should be paying school taxes for.
However, the documentation for this exemption is almost insane and that's one of the things I've been working on this past week.
I'm happy to say I did manage to go to the property tax office today and put in the necessary documentation which gives us another three years of tax exemption. Well, it's not exactly exemption but it's a significant reduction that means our annual property taxes instead of being almost $8,000 are about $1,800.
Tomorrow at the crack of dawn, I am off to head to the nearest Social Security office so I can get the US version of "after 65 Healthcare" — known as Medicare — all straightened out. That is also a convoluted nightmare, that additionally has to be negotiated via the nearest regional office which only has office hours between 9:00 a.m. and noon every weekday. And that's it!
One of the things, of course, is that I have to document my age to make sure that I'm not trying to claim something that's not mine before I'm old enough for it... but as somebody born in Denmark, we don't really have birth certificates in the same way they are issued in the USA.
For lack of a better way of putting it, in Denmark we have national ID numbers that we're just about born with and our date of birth is encoded into the number itself and it follows you all your life. It's also printed in your passport so all that is really needed to document your age is your passport with your personal number in it because it can't belong to anybody else.
Tomorrow, I get to explain that at the Social Security office and hope they take it as good words... otherwise I will have to somehow procure a paper copy which thankfully I can get through the Danish national ID system because they take into account Danes who reside in countries other than Denmark with different requirements.
Wish me luck!
Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!
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2026.06.23 01:11 PDT
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