Well today, or rather yesterday was a happy day in the Alien house.
To explain, 2 years ago while here on an employer-specific work permit I took a trip in my last legal months to Las Vegas...what the hell, on this side of the pond, may never get another chance to do the drive etc. Anyways me and the wife had a bit of fun playing slots, catching a couple of shows etc, the typical stuff you do in Vegas, during this I put $5 in a slot and won $10K...I kid you not.
I had to get something called a "handpay" and when the guy came to give me it he announced that 30% was deducted for taxes...I nearly knocked him out thinking I was getting scammed (hey this was Vegas!). We did the round and round of me saying I'm not American and why do I have to pay US taxes, and him saying it doesn't matter...it was deducted..end of. I was not a happy bunny, despite pocketing the entire cost of our trip plus in that one payment.
Being one of those people that can't let go, I discovered that if we file a US tax return for that year and show the losses from the players cards (those cards they give you at the casino that you put in the slot and then earn points...well they also keep tally of your wins and losses). If we did this, then I could put my losses for the trip over all against the 3K deducted, and if less tax was actually due..get a refund.
I filed as soon as the year ended (you had to wait until the tax year ended), the casino, to their credit supplied the info from my card from the hotel and casino we had stayed in within 15 minutes of the request by email, despite there only being 7 days activity in total on the card. I then had to file for something called an ITTN (international tax treaty number..I think) that basically gave me a US tax number, problem was you had to show your passport to either an authorized agent in your country (in my case all in London..600 miles away, and wanted nearly as much as the refund was worth), or to any IRS office in the US. So I left it until...we got married in the USA, and 2 days before the wedding smugly went into the local IRS office, showed my passport and filed my return. They issued the ITTN weeks later and stated within 6 weeks I would get my return..I waited..and waited.
Finally I phoned and the woman on the phone said "we have no record of a return filed" (they had lost it). I decided to leave it until I had the whole work permit/PR thing all sorted..so being at the stage I'm at now, I started chasing it again (10 months after the original filing), this last week, one of the first things I did was check a part of the IRS website called "your refund" just in case it had been issued and stolen..you never know.
It showed..cheque issued 5th August..this year! I rapidly phoned the IRS (as we had moved twice since then) to explain and maybe get a new cheque to be issued to my current address..they can't do anything until 2nd sept. But he did explain that my return had been mis-handled..with a bit of gentle nudging, he more or less admitted it had fallen behind a desk etc, and been discovered a few weeks ago. So the wife comes home and says "why not just phone your old super, after all you lived in that apartment for 2 years..they know you..maybe if it's there, they could stick it in the bank for you". I did, the super said "gee Alien, funny you phoned, I got this tax demand I think for you, something from the IRS". One small donation to the supers retirement fund later (cover their gas to the bank and a beer), I have suddenly got 1348 dollars in my own account...after 10 months of having nothing..to have the money to pay for my own costs from here in and not be sponging off my wife, for drivers medicals, license costs, car registrations, work clothes etc...well that makes me a happy alien!
I know it's not strictly in the theme of the thread, but those sitting sponging off their spouses will understand.
