U.S. Tax Madness

Taxes are always overwhelming, for everyone -- everywhere -- but trying to find answers to questions about the U.S. tax code is like trying to reason with HAL. "... I'm sorry, Dave ... I can't do that, Dave. ... Dave..." says the automated receptionist in my mind ...

In the process of trying to get my tax refund direct deposited in my Canadian-based, U.S. Dollar bank account, I did have an interesting chat with the Royal Bank customer service representative. He couldn't help me with the direct deposit business; in order to transfer funds to my account, you need first a three-digit institution number, then a five-digit branch transit number, then my seven-digit account number. However, the U.S. tax form asks first for a nine-digit routing number (my parents and I got into a lively discussion about the pronunciation of rOOting-vs.-rOWting -- apparently one pronunciation is Canadian and the other American, though I suspect it's simply regional), and then a seventeen-digit account number. Norman, my customer service representative, was able to get the routing number (money from the U.S. comes through JP Morgan Chase first, before going on to RBC Financial), but the seventeen digit account number remained a mystery -- to both of us. Norman suggested I 'simply call them up' and ask if they will do direct deposit to a Canadian bank (I'm sure there are other people who do this; I'm not the only Canadian who's ever worked in the U.S.) ... but alas, ... HAL...

Norm and had a good little conversation about my experiences as a Canadian in the U.S. though. Of course, he asked me the age-old question (the one everyone always asks me when I tell them I went to school in the states): what's it like? His kids were thinking of going to school in the U.S., and he wanted a blind, unbiased opinion from a stranger (...). I said, it's almost like here [Canada], only fewer things are free (i.e. health care, social services, a good public library) -- and only the strong survive. I found living in the U.S. to be fairly cut-throat -- not in the sense that anyone is out to get you, but in the sense that, in the U.S., one must raise raise one's voice in order to be heard. You need to be a vocal, pro-active personality in order to be successful and find what you want -- and in order to get what you want, you have to be able to ask for it.

Besides the challenge of living in a nation of extroverts after growing up in a nation of introverts, I told him that the second challenge was this: everyone assumes that, because Canada and the U.S. are neighbouring North American cultures, most things are exactly the same -- and that most institutions are completely compatible, when they most certainly are not. (Case in point -- the very difference and incompatibility between Canadian + American direct deposit information and routing (or Routing?) number practices. The irony that this customer service representative had no idea whether or not they could or would wire my cheque from the U.S. to the Canadian bank that he works for, and how, being a customer service representative, he might help me to arrange that -- I think the irony was lost on him.)

I told him how, when I first moved to Rhode Island, I had another banking problem, when my small-town Rhode Island bank branch failed to process a transfer of funds because the computer system was not set up to recognize foreign currency (transferred from my same Canadian bank -- an institution that also primarily deals in Canadian funds, but also in U.S. dollars!) . Norm tried to sell me on another bank service, RBC Centura -- which has branches in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. But what good would that do me, way up in Rhode Island?

I think I'll just do it the old fashioned way, and wait for my cheque to arrive in the mail -- like everybody else.