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Bruce & Kevin - Damage Assessment First Happy Hour

A part of Bruce and Mary’s old life back in the States that they have really missed is the Friday night happy hours they used to share with their St. Cloud friends at brother Neil’s place (one of Joey’s pals, when announcing that he was going to “Uncle Neil’s Place” for happy hour was asked, “Where is that bar, never heard of it?”). And before St. Cloud it was our Alexandria friends who we partied down with, every Friday night. Let’s see what happens in Mérida when Bruce and Mary introduce that time honored tradition of Friday night happy hours to their Mérida friends.

We’d talked about it for a long time and we finally decided to kick off the first Mérida Happy Hour back in January when Kevin and Rosie were visiting. Kevin and Rosie are very social and they had met many of our Mérida friends on prior visits so we knew they would enjoy it, as visitors, so we sent out the invites. The invite went something like this: Please join us for the  first Mérida Happy Hour this Friday. It commences at 5 and ends….. In an effort to keep the hosts responsibilities minimal (to encourage lots of hosting volunteers) everyone should bring their drinks and a botana, snack, to share. By the end of every happy hour a new host shall announce themselves and the tradition shall continue. Absolutely no RSVPs, come if you like, don’t if you don’t and the first rule of Happy Hour Club is…. there are no rules, the above are just suggestions.

Well that first happy hour at our place was quite the success with about 25 people showing up, including our local friends Enrique and Mary (not Maria) who, in typical local fashion did not show until most guest were leaving. Well it didn’t make much difference to us as Dave the Brit and his entourage kept us up until 1am anyhow.

The next weekend our good friends Lorcan and Lexi hosted, at their cozy house in Centro, with its beautiful gardens and patio. We were the first there and helped them set-up and again it was quite the crowd but with a number of different folks who were new to us. The local contingent showed about when we were leaving which caused all future Happy Hour invites to not be open ended. Now, quite explicitly, invitations  state that the hours of Happy Hour are 5-7.

The next happy hour was at Dave the Brit’s new fish and chips place on Calle 59 in the heart of downtown

Happy Hour Club at Captain Flint's

and gringo gulch. Cap’n Flints was not slated to be open for a bit but Dave thought this would be a good opportunity for a trial run and it was a huge success. Dave started off with botanas of breads and cheeses and then quickly served up his fish and chips and deep fried empanada type things that Dave’s right hand man Varon had essentially invented. Very good but not too heart healthy as you can imagine. Again there were a lot of familiar faces and another batch of new ones.

The next happy hour was hosted by Enrique and Mary, our local friends and they live way out in Fracc. Francisco Montejo. This was the first happy hour that we could not walk to. Our taxi pulled up at Enrique’s brand new house in a brand new development and boy, were Lorcan and Lexi glad to see us. They were the first guests to arrive, we were the second. You see, Lorcan and Lexi’s Spanish is quite a bit better than the average gringo down here but not quite up to conversational levels so they had been struggling. And soon we were joined by a neighbor Alberto who treated us to his Tamarindo Margaritas (quite good) and soon Dave and his entourage showed up along with a few others and the evening, for us, was capped by Alberto tuning up his guitar and crooning some Latin love songs for us. It was a very enjoyable happy hour (but smallish due to the far out location) and one that we were happy to have shared with Dale and Judy, church friends of Mary’s mother Harriet, who were in town for just a couple of nights on a bus tour of Central and SE Mx.

Alberto Serenading Us at Enrique and Mary's Casa

Then for the first time, no one volunteered in response to the weekly Wednesday batch email that Lorcan, bless his soul, had taken upon himself to send out informing of the next happy hour host or soliciting one. So, we decided to meet at El Lucero del Alba, our neighborhood bar. As we are the founding fathers we chose our bar and a fine one it is with reasonable beers and free, most excellent botanas. We were the first ones there and we helped our server buddies Filipe, Lucio, and Enrique bunch tables together for this gringo onslaught and leading the charge was Dave and his entourage followed closely by Lorcan and Lexi. We had about 20+  turn out and it was fun but it was difficult to mix as you had to hop from table to table to do so.

Mary and the Hard Core of The Happy Hour Club

We missed the next happy hour which was hosted by Debbie our good friend and it was the doozy of the bunch as 45 people attended. We heard a lot about it at the next happy hour that we attended (I know, we the founders dropped out for a little while and boy did we get crap for it!), again at El Luceros. Once more no volunteer stepped forward and Lorcan and Lexi and Mary and I discussed this at length as things like Happy Hour are important! We agreed that this Happy Hour club had morphed out of all recognition. We looked around the room and we knew maybe half of the people and we also knew why nobody was volunteering, it had grown too big! So we decided to do one last call for a volunteer and if no one stepped up, we’d take a break for the summer and reassess in the fall. And that is what happened, no one stepped up and we are on break. But I like my idea better. Once we get back from MN in early June (we have some things to attend to like Mary’s annual May 17^th celebration and… something else…. oh yea, our daughter Helen’s marriage!) I will propose, because why the hell should we take the summer off from Happy Hour(?), that we, on the sly, start all over. Only this time it will be only the hard core, our intimate group (you know who you are) and we will all be sworn to secrecy. I am thinking of passwords and secret hand shakes. I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Once again it is another case of be careful what you wish for, for Bruce and Mary. But maybe next time they can do Happy Hour right and it will be a cause for celebration for all of their Mx days! Well that was a little over the top, but what the hell you can never underestimate the power of Happy Hour.

Bruce Working on 2009 Taxes Poolside, Naturally

Last year, 2009, was Bruce and Mary’s first full tax year living in México. Now Bruce is no whiz at taxes having given up that duty to his ever steadfast and painfully honest accountant Wayne, but now things have changed. Let’s see what happens when Bruce is on his own again, one on one against the taxman.

I called Wayne up over the holidays to get lined up for my 2009 taxes. Wayne had done our 2008’s, when the only income we had was the rental from our house and the short time in early 2008 when we were still living our old lives, working for Chassis Liner and Merrill Corp. As usual, Wayne had worked his magic and gotten us pretty substantial refunds. However on this call, everything changed. “Wayne, how’ya doing buddy? What’s new in Alexandria?” He proceeded to get me up to speed and to tell of a mutual acquaintance who had looked at property around booming Alex in the early 80s, just like I had, I tell Wayne. Well, the only difference was he actually borrowed the money and bought the land. I didn’t. Now, he’s splitting time, early retired, between his lake home on the chain of lakes and his condo in Hawaii. Wayne and I commiserated, but he reminds me that at least I was able to run away to México while he is still, at age 62, slaving away over taxes for guys like me. Time to get down to business. I explain my situation: We’ve lived in México all for all of tax year 2009 and our income from the Canadian outfit for which we online moderate is not huge but significant. He says to me, “Sorry Bruce, that’s ‘world-wide income while living abroad’. Don’t know a thing about it, can’t do it.” When I start whining he tells me that he understands there are a lot of tax preparers in CA that handle that sort of thing, maybe I can find someone there.

Now what?

Well I ignore it for a couple of months, it is flat out not any fun to think about, but March rolls around and when it still hasn’t gone away I start my research. Number one, do I even have to file? After all we live in Mexico and a Canadian firm pays us. We don’t drive on American roads, we have no 911 that we can call (policia protecting our butts now), and no one is going postal (Mx mail ain’t that bad) for us down here . It’s not that we’re not solid, taxpaying democrats, happy to pay for our infrastructure, it’s just that, right now, we’re not using it. Well the US of A feels like that way to a certain extent. I discovered that all Americans under age 65, everywhere, have to file a return, if you have a minimum income of $12,000 (married-filing-jointly). However, if you’re living abroad and qualify, there is schedule 2555 that gives a $91,400 exemption. I did the worksheet and we qualify, Que bueno!

So I went to the IRS website and learned about e-filing and chose a company among the many on the list, 1040Now, and got to work. After much trial and error I thought I was ready to go and low and behold, there are no taxes to be paid. But then I found an error on form 2555, I had missed a zero on our online moderation income and so I showed a negative income on my 1040 long form. What’s up? Oh yea, form 2555 only exempts my income and with the right number in there that exemption is greater than the rental income I had reported on schedule E. I still had to report our moderation income, duh. So I checked out how to do that. We received no W2 or the Canadian equivalent because we were not employees which is essentially when I realized, Doh, we’re independent contractors. So young man, go to schedule C. I did so and at least we qualified for the C-EZ and I filled it out. And that is when I discovered the good old self-employment tax. After some more googling I verified that there is no way to avoid SE no matter what you do or where you live in the world. And that nasty straight rate is about 15%, ouch!

Well, we considered, briefly, ignoring our self employed income, after all who’s to know? Our company does not file 1099s with the IRS. But then, like a little voice in the back of my head I  remembered what my insurance agent, CPA, brother Mark once told me, “They catch you fooling with your deductions, they’ll penalize you and charge interest. They catch you fooling with your income; they’ll throw you in jail.” Yea, I guess we owe, and are going to pay, a chunk of change.

So I completed the filing, filled out the ACH payment authorization and clicked “submit” and waited to see if this filing was correct and would be accepted.

The next day I checked and the filing was accepted and a couple days later I checked our GMFCU account (General Mills Federal Credit Union – love those guys, especially Gina who handles our account) and our Fed taxes had been snatched out of there. Fed taxes were a done deal, signed, sealed and delivered.

Now onto MN state taxes. I emailed the state revenue site and stated our circumstances and found that although we wouldn’t owe taxes we still had to file. And that is how these free tax outfits like 1040Now make their money. They charge for the state return. So I filled out the return, payed the $16.95, and clicked submit. The next day I logged in and saw that it had been accepted.

And that, my friends, is how we handled “Living Abroad While Earning World-Wide Income”.

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. If you have any questions about the above, please comment. Bruce is not a tax accountant but he does play one on TV. Hasta la vista, baby!