Monday brought - surprise surprise - nothing from the AHV. So, it was back to calling, finding out that the woman handling my case wasn't there, and being passed to an English speaker. He told me that I needed to submit a signed copy of one of the contracts (yes, I had posted it to them last Monday and had no response, that's why I'm calling) - and that I
must have Swiss clients. Now, I did translate the letter online, so it's not exactly a high quality rendition, but there are two words in brackets after the bit about Swiss clients which come out as "if available". So, the letter doesn't suggest this is a requirement.
He put me through to someone else who had even more interesting things to say. For a start, she contradicted him and said I don't need Swiss clients. (I wish there was some kind of instant penalty button for when public servant contradict each other, especially in such a short time frame.) But she also said that
agency contracts don't count. The reason for this is that under Swiss law, agencies must pay the social insurance contributions of freelancers who do work for them. I've seen this before in Germany and it's a good candidate for the root cause of why all freelancers at a previous place of work there were forced to work via agencies.
(So... if this contract doesn't even count, why did you write to me - when you had already promised I would get a decision - asking for a signed copy?)
That certainly presents a small problem. Most of my clients are agencies. It's not unusual for someone like me, a relatively new and non-specialised translator. But according to this person, only direct clients qualify, and I must have at least two. I do have two (although I was so fixated on the disqualification of agency contracts that I forgot about one of them until after the call) but I don't have contracts with them. A lot of work is done quite informally - I did the work, and invoiced for it and was paid, but don't have anything you could call a contract. She also said that using my UK website/email address on my business cards counted against me. (Well, I am kind of waiting for my permit before I change everything. You could force me to create a GmbH, or not let me into the country. I'd really like to know the outcome of this first.)
Anyway, I followed up with an email to the woman handling my case expressing my gentle surprise at this news, emphasising that UK agencies do not pay my National Insurance, and pointing out that there are invoices for two direct clients in the pack I sent in (I was told invoices would be enough). Hopefully someone will get back to me about it, although my accountant was quite exasperated when I told her what had happened and suggested that we "really should insist" on my self-employment soon otherwise Migrationsamt might start taking a dim view of the whole thing.
Let's just say that my illusions of Switzerland have taken a good kicking. I'm sick of even telling people about it now.
In other news, himself was working on his tax return over the weekend and so, left partially to my own devices other than supplying tea and moral support, I finished my archiving in my pretty Ikea boxes and all my filing and accounting too. I have invested in two applications,
iBank (chosen at least in part for multi-currency support) and
Cashculator, to help me out with this - the former is a bookkeeping tool, the latter a forecasting/budgeting one. My main concern is am I earning enough to cover rent, internet, insurance, travel and food costs here. I am still building up my business, and it hasn't been helped by the state of limbo I'm currently in, but I need to know where I stand.
Our networked storage is offline today for some reason so, deprived of the ability to sort out backups and get at all of my past jobs to do calculate word counts for the CIoL, I accomplished my goal of clearing all my stuff off the couch in the second bedroom/office (we can actually use it as a guest bed now) and have also binned a good deal of beading magazine cutouts that I had been hoarding. There are always these stubborn little piles of things that you can't bring yourself to throw out but that have no place to live.
Himself was home sick yesterday, we had a massive thunderstorm last night and it kept threatening today, but no rain or storm so far. I'm meeting a fellow translator for lunch at a Japanese restaurant tomorrow, and will have to whip up some cake to bring to German on Thursday, as the birthday person has to supply the cake. (Maybe this tells me a lot about Germanic cultures.) We ate up some sweet potatoes as mashed potatoes last night, and that persuaded me to look at some sweet potato muffin recipes. Himself has also offered to take me out to dinner, but not sure where we'll go yet.
