2009-03-25

Bureaucracy

My companys first fiscal year ended in August last year, that means that i must submit a fully audited financial report to the government within 7 months or face a fine. As this was my first time doing this it took a while to get it done and when i finally came around to submitting it the auditing firm about a month ago they apperantly were short staffed due to sickness. Finally i got a call on monday where they said that they'll be finished this week.

Still i'm only one week away from the final submission date and as the agency(Bolagsverket) is warning about a 5 day "handling" time i'm really on a short limb here. After reading up on the rules regarding online submission i really wasn't sure about how they do things as it seems like incorporated firms must use various kinds of software to generate files in some kind of format, so i decided to call them up and ask about applies if you don't want to spend money just to send something (or by some ideological or other choice would be running an operating system that doesn't have these apps).

The conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi, i'm wondering if i could submit a scanned PDF through an authenticated service instead of sending in papers? (Afaik everything will be scanned to pdf by them)
Lady on the phone: Hang on a second It says here that you have to have this program..
Me: yes, i read your page but is there a specific reason you can't accept a scanned document for an incorporated company but you will accept it for private business?
Lady on the phone: um... um.... um.... well ... umm ... umm.. well because you have to use one of these programs.
Me: <*sigh*> Ok nevermind

I don't think that this type of behaviour is an exclusivly Swedish thing, but i suspect it's more common here due to labour laws and the way the Swedish government tries to subsidize cities that looses jobs due to big companies shutting factories or the government closing down things like military bases.

Now before any politically correct Swede comes around and accuses me of being a "big-city-slicker", i'd like to point out the fact that i grew up in a small town in the northern part of the country (Haparanda) and i actually belive that you can make a financial case of moving many service jobs out to smaller towns with lower living costs.

But as with everything you actually have to have a plan and do stuff properly, the Swedish model of providing a job to people to keep them employed for the sake of employment and reducing unemployment numbers doesn't help ANYBODY the slightest bit.