Last week we got a letter telling us we had to validate our home address for tax purposes. We have been living here since the 1990s and have never lived any place else and own no other properties. Easy peasy.

Except I forgot I was living in techno-dystopia called Austin, Texas.

We have the standard Homestead Exemption for taxes, as we should since this, uh, is where we live. The system involved taking a photo of your Drivers license and uploading it to a web site. We were rejected. Why? The drives license spells our street name (correctly) as “MCNEIL” while the tax office spells it “MC NEIL” (with a space). So no match.

After many calls and emails we are told it will take several weeks to resolve this issue. Which puts us past the deadline for verifying our home address. There are also dozens of similar “McNeil” addresses out there and I’m gonna assume lots of other near misses like it. I feel like I’m living in Brazil.