I walked towards a stout red-brick building with my heart already racing. "Hôtel des Impôts" the sign on the door says as it mechanically swings forward to let me in. I side-step a big white dog sitting outside who looks up at me longingly. "I know how you feel, man. I hate this place too."
"Hotel of taxes," I think to myself as I take my place behind a line of people waiting to approach the welcome desk. As I stand behind a mother with her fussy child in a pram, I occupy my thoughts with this absurd translation. Of course, it translates to "office of taxes" or "tax bureau" or something to that effect, but I would rather pass the time imagining what exactly a tax hotel would look like -- I suppose it would be a really unhappy place to visit, where the nightly rate is extortionate and nobody actually wants to be there. Ratty old bedsheets, gloomy housekeepers wandering around, and I bet the breakfast is probably really shitty too. Wait, they probably don't even have breakfast...
Suddenly, the woman behind the desk is looking up at me behind thick bifocals and waves me forward with an aloof and impatient "bonjour." My pulse quickens again and I start to panic.
"Bonjour..." I begin. I place my folder on the counter and take a deep breath. I start rambling something in French which I'm sure sounded like nonsense to her: "I'm here for to obtaining a certify for the exoneration on habitation of the taxes..." I'm not even listening to the words I'm saying, they just scramble out of my mouth and I hope that together they form something resembling coherence. She looks at me with a piteous smile and says "d'accord," as a ticket from the machine prints and she points toward the rows of chairs. "Vous attendez." Number 724, my ticket says, and I look for an empty chair amongst a group of bleary eyed people.
I sit down feeling defeated. Sometimes the French language hangs like smoke in my mind, and grasping the words that I need feels like trying to grab a handful of it. What was the word that that guy on the métro said yesterday, the guy with big mole on his chin? He was talking about social security... Décaisser, démarrer, déclencher... D-something... What was that verb....
I try thinking about how I'm going to explain my situation to the person who I'm about to meet. My thoughts quickly begin to trail off to the many times I've been in this situation before. At the URSSAF, the RSI, the CPAM, the list goes on and I don't like dealing with these government workers because they make you feel like you've gravely offended them simply with your existence. I decide wholeheartedly that I hate doing this and I would rather be warm in my bed or anywhere else, but I've got a bill from the French government asking me for an extravagant sum of money which I don't have, to pay a tax that I know I'm exempt from. And there's a really sweet coat that I would rather spend my money on instead...
I pick up my phone and start texting a friend who I knew was dealing with French bureaucracy at this very moment as well. "I hate doing this," I wrote. "Why do I always fall into these legal loopholes where nobody knows what to do with me?" He responded: "Because we're gringo feo and fajita loca and we never learn." I chuckle quietly to myself feeling a little bit better, but if I can't get this problem sorted, I won't be able to afford rent next month, let alone that coat or even Christmas presents for my friends. That thought quickly jolts me back to reality
Finally my number appears on the screen. I slip by and climb over people slouched over in their chairs, heavy heads pressed into tired hands, all staring vacantly at the blue screen flashing 724. I walk into the room and a petite woman is sitting behind a desk wearily. I offer her a different and hopefully better version of the same story I told earlier. This woman, though speaking to me as if I were a very slow child, at least is accommodating to the obvious fact that I'm foreign. She prints out a paper saying that due to my arrival in France in late 2009, I was exempt from the residency tax -- but next year, she warned, it won't be the case.
That's it? I can go? It was hardly five minutes later that I was out the door, feeling positively buoyant knowing I wasn't going to have to live on baguettes and pasta for the next month. I called my friend, who had just received his official status as a French student. "Congratulations on becoming a french student!" I told him. "and you, congratulations on evading the tax system!" he replied. Oh you know, just another day in the life. Now if only I could figure out a way of avoiding these situations entirely.
Bises.
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