Volunteer work and shopping
That’s what I did today, to summarize.
Filing taxes for other people is quite mind-numbing. I quote another volunteer (handling Workfare Bonus, but involving roughly the same procedures), on this:
“That’s why your shift’s from 2-6. If you did this the whole day from morning till afternoon you’ll like…”
I can’t really agree more. The work itself isn’t bad, but it’s really numbing in a certain sense.
And I made mistakes. I forgot to return one lady her IRAS letter (complete with PIN number), but I hope she’ll come get it sometime soon. I’m sure I goofed up elsewhere but generally I followed the book.
What struck me was the whole screwed up concept of making taxi drivers who don’t (they usually don’t) make more than S$26,000 a year file their income statements. It’s not as if they’re taxable, and it just creates a lot of trouble. Not to mention that taxi drivers have a much more troublesome income-tax filing procedure. The nature of their work doesn’t produce neat income figures (and who on earth does his or her own accounts anyway? Even my accountant sister doesn’t bother, much less a driver whose income varies largely from day to day), and the figures they report are sometimes so startlingly low that I fear they might be charged for tax evasion. But in any case that really isn’t my problem.
I understand that it’s sort of important for the government to have some record of each and every person’s income, but sometimes, turning a blind eye won’t really hurt. It’s not as if with the rebates and deductions systems we have in place they are going to get taxed more than a few hundred dollars a year. I have seen one case in which the total taxable income fell to under 3000 dollars. And with the tax laws that means roughly 10% tax. 200 odd dollars of tax. Big deal.
After my duties I headed off to Compass Point for a look-see (and ended up buying a lot of Chinese reference materials - mostly Ci2 Yu3 Shou3 Ce4 s), and wound up at Mos Burger’s where I bought my usual (Yakiniku Rice, 5pc prawn, corn soup, medium iced milk tea). And I read Starship Troopers while eating.
Well that’s about it. Oh and I’m talking to the coolest thing in the known universe on MSN right now.
^^