Death and Taxes - I'd prefer death

Did you ever notice that everyone has a story about calling the Tax office? I had the unfortunate need to call them last week and all I can say is thank god I am not waiting on them. The, ahem, lovely automatic voice states that you will have to wait 9-10 weeks for your request to be processed.....let me repeat that - 9-10 weeks !! Not hours, not days, weeks. That is just outrageous and just shows the sort of rubbish that is running this country.

Something that I was discussing with the wife the other day is that you never see or hear a politician stating that they will help the Civil Service when they get to office. This is one of the most disgracefully run parts of our country. For those not living in Ireland allow me to elaborate. If you work in the Civil Service it’s a job for life. If you are unable to do your job (as in your crap at it) you don’t get fired. You get moved to another department where you can do less damage. It’s virtually impossible to get fired from the Civil Service. And the pay is amazing compared to normal people.

But back to my complaint. Well, let’s see. I was transferring some of my wife’s tax credits over to me but wait - no - its cant be, well yes. They actually got our tax numbers mixed up so that my tax limit was smaller than my previous one and so I got shafted in tax payments this month. But when I called there was a rather abrupt woman who insisted it was my fault. And I had to agree with her otherwise she wouldn’t help (this they are noted for anyways) and then I would have crap tax to pay for the next 2 months (I would be at the end of the 9-10 week wait). Seriously, how can you run a business and tell your customers that they have to wait 10 weeks to get an answer...how can they call themselves a "service" when that is the one thing they don’t provide.

Ah...rant over. I’m sure others have the same situation.