Weeknotes 6: 26 April to 2 May

This week felt ok until a sense of overwhelming doom and extreme anxiety crept in yesterday. The reason: Taxes

Because I am on a secondment, I still work for and get paid by GDS in the UK (meaning I pay taxes to HMRC,) even though I am a Canadian living in Canada. Before we left for Canada it seemed like this was a straightforward situation and the UK/Canada tax treaty would mean I don’t pay double taxes, but now that it’s time to file taxes in Canada, accountants here are telling me it’s more complicated than that, and some are suggesting I will have to pay double tax. I can’t seem to get proper answer on this and it all feels like more stress that I can handle.

I am an edge case, a person which a situation so complicated that nobody I can contact can give me clear answers. And it feels horrible. I’m in tears as I write this.

Paying double tax is a financial burden that will cripple my family. It makes me so angry that this might be the case, and that I have to look at paying thousands to hire tax experts to help me figure it all out. I am a mid-level government worker on a modest salary who has a young family to support. I am not someone trying to swindle the system, I am not trying to claim tax breaks I don’t deserve, or weasel my way out of paying for services that benefit all. It should be easy to pay my taxes. Why is it not?

Anyway, moving on …

I did some work things too.

• Research planning which didn’t get as much traction as I had hoped.
• Delving into meaty topics like what agile means in research and design and how to communicate findings.
• Various discussions to figure out what metrics are useful to measure our service by.
• Planning for a GoC research community meeting that’s coming up (date tba.)

Overall I wasn’t as productive as I would’ve liked to be but I’m trying to be kind to myself. These are impossible circumstances to be productive in.

My team has finished their Beta phase today and we’re celebrating with virtual drinks today, my first one! Happy Friday everyone!