Really?

Ben was told a couple of months ago that the International Students' Office would provide him with an online code to a tax program that is equipped to handle our particular (complicated) US tax situation. I collected our forms, added up numbers and made a few feeble attempts using free online programs such as TurboTax, H&R Block and something else I can't remember.

We finally received the tax code a little over a week ago. I input our information in the program and was unimpressed that there were some glitches. Let's just say that by increasing our charitable contributions by several hundred, the program told us that we OWED an extra $1400 in taxes. Topsy-turvy as things can be down here, I highly doubt the accuracy of that conclusion.

I was also unimpressed with a few other things, so I searched again for a program that could handle our non-resident alien status. Since this is the first year that we have to pay income tax in the US, it gets more complicated than in previous years when I used a (nameless) accountant who was rather disorganized, tardy and error-prone. We have been told various things about our tax status now that Ben's income has exceeded the US-Canada treaty limit for the 2009 tax year. The responses to our situation have varied from saying that we will retroactively owe tax on all income made here since 2005 (which would be kind of ridiculous, especially since we paid tax on that income in Canada) to saying that we may owe back-tax on the income for 2009 that was previously considered tax-exempt.

Long story short, I admitted defeat.

We had received a letter in the mail from an accountant introducing his practice to the neighbourhood. His name? Mr. Starbuck. Now clearly I thought this was a sign that he was the one who could help us out.

Ben called him last week and explained our tax situation. At first, he thought we could simply use the regular forms. Um, no. We need to use the 1040NR - that's NR for Non-Resident, which is what we are. Even if we were somehow considered resident for tax purposes, we are still considered non-resident aliens and need to file as such. After a few minutes of conversation, Mr. Starbuck concluded that since he had never filed these forms before, he'd pass on the name of a "national" firm that had a local office.

At this point, Ben headed out with the girls to Rachel's Kindermusik class and I went upstairs to call Firm #2. A bored-sounding receptionist answered. I gave her the basics of our situation and asked if this was something that their firm could do. She had no idea but volunteered to check for me. After a few minutes, I was transferred to someone else. I asked her if she offered tax preparation services for form 1040 non-resident. Her response: "Um, where are they resident of then?"

Not really being in the mood, I simply said, "You know, I'm not sure. Let me check and get back to you! Thanks, bye!"

Back to square one we went. There was another firm in the phone book that had a website so I poked around on there enough to see that they at least sounded competent online. I called and was soon transferred to one of the accountants. This lady was:

1. Helpful
2. Knowledgeable
3. Smart
4. ABLE TO HELP US!

Ben dropped off our large envelope of tax forms, figures and immigration information on Friday. She said that the usual turn-around time is about a week but that it might take her longer due to our situation. However, she has filed forms for non-residents before and sounded pretty sure that it wouldn't be difficult. Time will tell, I suppose.

I did chuckle when she told me that she'd once had to prepare Canadian tax returns and found them very confusing. It's all what you know.

I'll conclude with my final surprising discovery, which is that I believe we will be paying more tax on Ben's income in the US than we would have done on the same income in Canada. Yet "socialist" Canada has higher taxes according to so many down here. Yes, I fully agree that the rich are taxed at a higher rate, but it looks like for the average working-class family that income tax is considerably lower in Canada. I'll be sure to update once we get our US returns back and can file the Canadian ones.

Spring cleaning and other stuff

It's time for the annual "Oh no, Passover starts soon and we have to clean everything, everything, EVERYTHING!" freak-out at our house. So far this weekend I have done 11 loads of laundry, mostly winter gear and bedding.

Both cars (and respective carseats!) have been vacuumed out and 2 boxes were dropped at Goodwill this morning. Incidentally, Goodwill doesn't open for donations until 11 on Sundays.

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We saw a robin on the ground outside our window this morning and told Anna, "Look! There's a robin on the ground!" "No, robin! Go away! That's OUR ground!" she yelled indignantly. Yes, the two-year-old is learning about possessions and possessiveness. She's quite serious about it, in fact. I would not suggest messing with her!

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Yesterday morning Ben went to get Anna from the babysitting room at Beth Shalom. He asked if she was ready to go back to the service and she replied, "Yes, I'm ready to go back to the circus!" Some days she's not too far off there...

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Rachel is getting very excited about her upcoming birthday party at Build-a-Bear. Apparently her friends are all receiving hand-drawn pictures in their loot bags. I wasn't actually aware that we were doing loot bags since the kids will all go home with a stuffed animal anyway!! I guess we'll have to get creative.

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Anna has decided that she has to wear her dress shoes everywhere. I'm not quite sure what the brown shoes with pink flowers did to earn her disdain, but they have been rejected now for several weeks straight. I suppose I should be grateful that she's not insisting on her monkey rainboots every time we leave the house.

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10 weeks from now we'll be on our way to London. That's not a long time to finish my insane decluttering projects here! So much for relaxing now that we've turned the taxes over to a real accountant.

I'm confused

Who took us out of reality and dumped us in dreamland where Anna goes to bed at 7, Rachel goes to bed at 7:45 and they both wake up at 7 a.m.?!?!?!?

We should have changed the clocks months ago! (Or, really, we should have had the courage to put Anna to bed at 6. I suspect that she'd have slept until 6 a.m. had we done so.)

Movies

Until today, Rachel and Anna had never seen a full-length movie. This afternoon the girls were jumping on Ben in the playroom and I was sitting on the couch in the living room. I decided to turn the tv on and found that Spaceballs was playing.

Yes, our entire family sat down and watched from beginning to end. I'm not sure whether we're more ashamed or proud to announce that Spaceballs was the girls' first movie!

(And for anyone who hasn't seen it, can we just say "Star Wars Parody"!?!?! I haven't seen it since high school and we were totally cracking up.)

And so it goes...

Ben and I thought we'd get a jumpstart on the issue of "service providers" since we know how much fun that can be. Not being thrilled at the idea of dealing with the evil Rogers Empire again, we headed to the Bell Canada website where we were offered a live chat, transcript of which follows:

A chat representative will be with you in about 0 minute(s). Thank you for waiting.

Chat representative Anne has joined the session and is ready to help. To start, please provide your name and home phone number.

Anne: Hello, thank you for visiting bell.ca. How may I help you today?

Ben: I'm trying to figure out what options I have for service in London, ON, specifically for internet.

Anne: Sure, I can definitely help you with your request.

Ben: can you tell me if there are options other than the internet essential plus?

Anne: May I know what services do you have with Bell?

Ben: none at the moment because I live in Kansas but I'm moving to London in June.

Anne: May I have the Street name, Street number, Apt/suite, City, province and postal code to check the availability of Internet service at your place?

Ben: *Insert address here*

Anne: Thank you.

Anne: Please give me 2 minutes while I look up the information for you. Are you comfortable with that?

Ben: Yes, I am very comfortable with that.

Anne: Thank you for staying online.

Anne: I am glad to inform you that Bell Internet Essential Plus plan is available in your address.

Ben: Yes, but my original question was whether or not there were other options.

Anne: "Bell Internet service – Portable 512 Kbps" plan and "Bell Internet service – Portable 3 Mbps" plan are available in your address.

Anne: In "Bell Internet service – Portable 512 Kbps" plan you will get Download speed upto 512 kbps and 10 GB of monthly usage.

Anne: In "Bell Internet service – Portable 3 Mbps" plan you will get Download speed upto 3 mbps and 30 GB of monthly usage.

Anne: Are you with me?

Ben: Yup, thanks, that's all I needed to know.

Anne: Thank you for choosing Bell and using Bell.ca for your Self-Serve solutions. Have a great day!

Goin' home...

I find it fitting that I recently played a movement from Dvorak's New World Symphony. The second movement uses themes from spirituals, including "Goin' home" and that is just what we are doing in June.

Ben was offered his same job back here next year - same pay, same lack of job security, same crappy health-lack-of-care, etc. Supposedly it's illegal for group insurance plans to exclude pre-existing conditions and yet that's exactly what they do, whether it's for 90 days or a year. Either way, it doesn't matter. We're not about to let Ben get caught up in a bureaucratic net when he's on Remicade every 10-12 weeks and it's *working* for him!

Technically they might have offered him a tiny pay raise but it wouldn't have made a difference. I calculated the cost of health insurance and doctor visits (because although we pay for insurance, we still pay the first $5000 out of pocket for myself and the girls, and the first $1000 for Ben) and also figured out how much we spend to have two vehicles with Ben's commute. Add in taxes, cost of living and trips home for Ben's "free" health care and it just wouldn't make sense to stay in the US at this time. The cost of flying Ben home 5 times/year is about 10% of what it would cost out of pocket for his treatments, for what it's worth. I assume that we wouldn't have to pay the entire cost here, but that's just that - an assumption. And I have learned NOT to make assumptions about anything here...

The other catch is that even if Ben were to be offered a tenure-track position somewhere in the US, we could only take it for 2 years since that's how much longer he can stay on the student visa with "academic training" status. After that we'd lose our OHIP and that's not an option for us as far as we're concerned. If we return to Canada for a few years, then we'll have the option to leave for 5 years and keep our OHIP. We're not planning to return to the US though, at least not unless it was for an amazing job offer. And since most of the entry-level tenure-track jobs in the US pay about 1/2 to 2/3 of what they pay in Canada, I think our time south of the border is pretty much done.

So where are we going? Back to London. We don't really have a lot of options at this point but we do have our connections in London still, and we've just bought a house there. (Not that our buying a house is necessarily a reliable indicator of us moving into said house, haha!) We get the house in early June and that will let us get settled before the fall. It should also let Ben get some umpiring in - that's something that he missed out on last summer because we weren't home for long enough for him to do anything. He wouldn't have the opportunity to umpire down here if we stayed, because the academic training visa that allows us to keep our OHIP also only permits Ben to work at the job for which he has approval in the form of a written letter. I doubt that he could convince anyone that umpiring is related to his DMA.

So to all of you Londoners reading this, look out! We'll be back before you know it! And thanks again to H, without whom this would not have been possible since in an ironic twist, she has seen our new house while we have not!

Tag teaming at its best

I don't know why or how this happens but it never fails. On the mornings that Anna sleeps in (6 or 6:30), Rachel is up before 7. On the mornings that Anna is up before 5 a.m., Rachel sleeps well past 8.

Since I'm sitting here blogging at 8 a.m. my time, let's assume that one of my children is still asleep and the other is watching "Dora the Explorer" at the moment.

Yes, it's been awhile

Maybe nobody reads my blog anymore since I hardly ever post. That's an intriguing thought. I'll take the off chance that people still get up in the morning eagerly awaiting the next installment of craziness in our lives and keep blogging though.

Yesterday Rachel had a friend over for a couple of hours. The girls had a blast playing with Rachel's camera. They took pictures of pretty much everything they could think of. At one point, her friend dropped the camera and said, "Oh no, I dropped the camera!" Rachel quickly reassured her that it was just fine because "this camera is built to survive drop after drop after drop!" Clearly she has the memory of her favourite animal and is rather susceptible to media influence.

One of Anna's favourite things to do right now is to ask who or what you are. A little while ago she asked Ben, "Dad, are you a man?" After hearing that he was indeed a man, she smiled smugly and said, "I man too!" Now she has figured out that she's a girl, but she still likes to go around saying "He did that" in reference to Rachel. And yes, she knows that Rachel is also a girl!

The other day at breakfast, Ben had given Anna a bowl of cheerios. When he asked if she wanted a spoon, she replied indignantly, "Of course, Dad!" Clearly he should have known better.

Rachel cracked me up recently. We were discussing the repertoire on her Kindermusik Young Child CD and I commented that some of the songs were ones that she already knew. She told me that "Miss Trilla must have put them on the CD because she knew that we knew them already!" (Please note that clearly Miss Trilla did not record these CDs!)

And for the piece de resistance (accents to be edited in when I'm upstairs on the desktop, haha!), Rachel had a great quote from her group class the other night. Since I take Rachel to most of her private piano lessons, Ben and Anna usually take Rachel to group. The groups are small - we've never had more than 3-4 kids in ours - and Anna is welcome to watch and participate where possible. At one point, Miss Jean (Rachel's teacher) asked Rachel if she knew the piece that the other girl had just played. It was Musette (by anonymous, haha), the last piece in book 1.

Rachel thought for a moment and exclaimed, "Yes! I know that piece!" Miss Jean asked her if she knew what it was called. "No, but it means that we're going to be practising piano soon!" (I often put her CD on in the morning and she knows that the end of the CD is her cue to go get ready for piano.)