Column: taxes, to pay or not?

I had not yet pulled the receipt from the machine when I heard someone yell behind me. It was the counter at the end of the hall who wanted to point out to me that I didn't need a number: his counter was free, he was immediately available for me, absolutely!

Although? Behind the counter I found a bored-looking young man slumped in his chair. He was handsome, though: his carefully combed haircut didn't miss a hair, and the edges of his close-shaven beard were trimmed to the nearest millimetre. The mirror at mother's house had been working overtime!

He also wore a very fashionable, fitted shirt, immaculate white and subtly interlaced with fine blue lines. The muscles of his gym torso made frantic efforts to escape this corset at every move of their owner. Maybe that's why he moved as little as possible…

The form I gave the young glamor boy, for payment of the annual council tax, he looked at with amazement. He didn't seem to know what to do with it, and to settle in, he pulled a serious spout and swung his stool back and forth.

I was surprised because this was an ordinary modulo F24 of which hundreds, if not thousands, pass by the post office every year. And in this period of levying taxes at all. Romeo (let me call this Latin Lover Romeo for convenience) started tapping some keys haphazardly, looked at the effect and…

"Giulia!" Romeo called in a more experienced post office worker. At the printer, a middle-aged lady, with the semi-bleached, medium-length hair that middle-aged Italian women seem to have patented, looked annoyed. She put some away and came to the counter. Her concerned look made me doubt for a moment that the drill was going well, but luckily, she typed in a few codes, mumbled some instructions, and shuffled off again. Romeo started typing enthusiastically, studied the form carefully and…

"Giulia!" Giulia looked up again, sighed visibly and came back to the counter. She looked at the screen, retyped some codes and left. This time it seemed to help because Romeo put my form in the printer to print the data on it. Suddenly I realized I hadn't signed yet. My Romeo probably didn't know that was necessary either! In a panic I yelled:Ma devo ancora firmare!'

'Si, si, dopo.' That could soon be possible, the expert said. I wasn't sure. For now, my F24 was set aside and Romeo beckoned me to hand him the other papers I had in my hand. Those were two letters from the Ministry of Transport with the friendly request for the also annual car taxto pay the motor vehicle tax. Letters that didn't seem very familiar to the junior clerk, or so I thought from the strained gaze with which he peered at the letters in an attempt to decipher them.

Julia! I cried in my mind, but no, this time Romeo got up and walked all by herself to the place where Giulia was still busy with her own worries. This gave me a view of the silky shiny silver-grey trousers that were very tight around Romeo's formidably muscled thighs. His bare brown feet stuck out from under the short, narrow legs, wrapped in extremely elegant, no doubt handmade shoes. After a short discussion, he returned.

With Giulia, who this time took the crutch to work with the bureaucratic monster now to make short work of it completely. She pushed aside the half-gutted KitKat lying next to the computer mouse and got to work. Romeo watched, picked up the KitKat and ate it with a bored look.

'Ma quando shame?' Julie asked me. "When is the expiration date?" Expiration date? I had no idea. When I receive a bill, I assume I have to pay it. And soon too, I don't want to be fined. "Non lo so," I answered truthfully, raising my eyebrows to back up my claim.

'Ah, ma Lei deve saperlo, altrimenti…' 'You need to know that or else…' Else what? A beating?
'Non posso pagare? Can't I pay?' 'Er, no, ci vuole la scadenza. No, you need to know the expiration date.'

As Giulia spoke these ominous words, she stared at the screen even more intently than before. Was there still a way out? My gaze fell on the letter I had handed over and now I saw for the first time the date written above in the salutation: March 19, 2019. March? That was impossible! I had only received the letter a week ago! Medio may! Now I could be sure I was late. A fine!

In panic I babbled a bit about the date, but Giulia, my Giulia, was still staring at the sacred screen in supreme concentration and didn't hear me. 'Julyshe cried suddenly. 'Lei deve pagare a luglio.' I didn't have to pay for a few weeks. 'Ma non e possibile adesso? Can't it already?' I asked. After all, you never knew.

'No,' sighed Giulia, 'Lei deve aspettare. You must wait.' She looked at me kindly but firmly, handed me back my letters and walked away. Romeo took his place on the crank again. Of 'OK, thanks.' I said goodbye disappointedly and walked to the exit of the post office. On my way home I remembered that I hadn't signed the F24 form after all.

'Giulia!!!'

P.S.

When I got home I decided to look up what the expiry date of the motor vehicle tax meant. You were indeed deemed to have died within a month of the matriculation, to pay the date of issue of the registration certificate. except in Lombardy. There were three fixed expiry dates: the end of May, the end of September and the end of January. Nothing July. "Giulia?"

Want to read more fun stories about life in Italy? You can find it in the three parts 'Italiaanse Status' by Stef Smulders, available at bol.com.