Twice to the tax office

My path(s) through the tax office

Tax day in Japan is March 15th. As I had a question about my return, I bundled up all my bits of paper and walked down to the tax office after lunch today.

It’s a busy place this time of year. There are forty seats at desks kittted out with pens, calculators, staplers, carbon paper and extra forms. 70% of the tables were full of harried housewives and small business owners. Another section of the large room is for consultations. I was directed there with about a half dozen other folks.

My question was answered ten minutes after I arrived, and to my surprise, I was told to get in line to use the touch panel system to fill in and print out my forms.

Fortunately there was a nice young man there to help me, because the kanji for tax-related items are quite over my head. He told me which buttons to press and where to fill in various numbers. There was some confusion about my income slips, as two clients didn’t send me any, but two did. He told me what to do, and I did it.

I was out of there with a completed and signed return 59 minutes after I walked in to ask my question. Hooray. Then I got home and actually looked at the numbers on the form. Uh-oh. It showed that I should be getting a 988,000 yen refund. That’s way too much. A quick calculation returned a more reasonable amount.

I turned right around and returned to the tax office. 25 minutes later, after my mistakes had been taken into the mysterious back room and corrected without my confused meddling, I was on my way with a corrected filing and still anticipating a refund.

Posted by kuri at March 06, 2006 03:39 PM