Die Lohnsteuerkarte

The Lohnsteuerkarte is an A5 piece of card that you receive when you first register in Germany.

The card contains your name and address, but also your tax class, the number of children you have and your confession.

When you start work, it is important to give it to you employer as soon as possible, so that the tax can be deducted from your wages correctly.

If you leave your job during the year, the card is returned to you with a printout of the tax paid. Otherwise, at the end of each year you receive the printout from your employer to enable you to complete your tax return.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

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Disclaimer: this podcast is a simple explanation for non-native speakers.  For tax advice, please contact a Steuerberater.

A lorry powered by… chocolate?

It sounds (or should that be tastes?) too good to be true. Yes, it really is a lorry powered by chocolate. Well, almost.

I came across this story on the BBC News website and it sounds like a crazy, also an innovative idea.

Put quite simply: the waste left over from cocoa when making chocolate is being recycled into bio-diesel. To make people aware of the project, the lorry is being driven from the UK quite literally to Timbuktu.

Why do I like this project? Well, since I started following news items about biofuels I have probably seen as many arguments against them as I have seen in favour of them.

This project seems to defeat most of the arguments against them: nothing is being grown especially to make the fuel, no trees are being chopped down.  The only question remaining is: does it take more or less energy to process the waste into bio-diesel than it did to process it before?

New Year’s Resolutions – Gute Vorsätze

Today in the Monday Podcast I talk about my plans for 2008.

These include more blogging, more technical writing but also more podcasting! I am currently planning German Words Explained podcasts for the coming months as well as more content for AllThingsGerman.net.

I also take a look back at 2007 and discuss how the prices in Germany have risen for food, train fares, petrol, and how they are going up in 2008 for parking and electricity.

Listen to the podcast to find out more:

(Press the “play” button to listen to the podcast)

Download the MP3 file | Subscribe to the podcast

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