I found a human. An actual real human.
I asked him about whether I need to file a tax return. Given I was in the US for 14 days of 2015, and I didn’t work for any of them, it seems ridiculous to do so. A friend of ours reckons I don’t need to.
I’d scoured the website looking for a definitive answer, rather than just interpreting various things, and couldn’t really come up with anything. So I thought I’d contact them. The online system eventually dumps you at a person who can’t actually offer tax advice, but does refer you to their phone system. So I rang their phone system.
However, after several attempts where I just got dumped out of the phone system after an automated message which basically said “This menu option no longer functions” I finally found a person. Yay!
Only no.
He informed me that “Because of budget cuts” there is “no longer a department that can answer your query”. We then spent about 10 minutes of entertainment as he searched the site, and went through the same loop of the online tax advice thing before concluding that “I may need to seek outside advice”.
So that’s fun.
