Monday: Trip to the Tax Office, AKA Adventures in Administration
(This is not nearly as exciting as ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
starkodama's Monday afternoon trip to the ward office... :)
I would have written this last night, but I fell asleep at 7:30pm instead.
Okay, so this story kind of starts back in late December, when I was going through papers and sorting things here, and found an envelope from my workplace, sent out with my November 25 paystub, saying "If you want us to do your taxes for you, please fill out this form and send it back no later than December 2. Otherwise it is your responsibility to go to the tax office yourself in March". Even if I'd opened the damn thing on time, I still might not have gotten it in on time. Grrr. It's kind of annoying because two years in a row, GEOS did my taxes for me -- and they would have the forms AT the school for us and send us emails like every day until we sent in our damn forms, because they didn't want us screwing it up. But this time, no email, no nothing, just that one paper in the one paystub letter.
So, fine. Go to the tax office in March. I figured I could handle that, except for one slight problem, that being: where the hell IS my tax office, and what the hell am I supposed to bring?
Fortunately, after my last pay stub in January, they also sent a slip with it summarizing my pay for the year and how much tax had been taken out. I figured that must be relevant, but didn't know why, so I brought it along... along with my Kawaguchi paid tax slips from last year, and my final pay stub, and the English forms they'd sent me in the mail, and so on.
Not knowing where my tax office was, I went to the next best thing: the Kita-ku kuyakusho, or ward administration building, which is in Oji, 6 minutes by train. It's kind of like a mini-city-hall for the Kita area of Tokyo, where I live. I figured if nothing else, they could at least point me in the right direction.
The first place they pointed me was actually the 2nd floor of the kuyakusho building, when I said basically, "I need to do something with taxes". This resulted in my spending 10 minutes talking to a nice lady who, when she finally figured out what the hell I was trying to convey (namely, "My company told me to go deal with my taxes on my own and I have no idea what I'm doing and all I have is this paper with my income reported on it, and only the one job and no life insurance or any other such crap"), said "You're in the wrong place. You need to go to the actual tax office, which is way the hell on the other side of Oji station," and handed me a map.
Well, that's fair, I figured, and so I set on my way to walk about 20 minutes to this other place. Got there, and there was a huge line out the door, so I waited in that. Fortunately, the tax office is right across the street from a high school, and their baseball club was practicing, so I watched that while waiting to get into the actual building. Once I got into the building I spent probably 20-30 minutes waiting in line worried to death I was going to end up in the wrong place. I didn't have any forms, couldn't read the ones that were there, didn't see a damn thing in English, and unlike most other places in Japan where people go "OMG A WHITE FACE, LET ME SPEAK TO YOU IN ENGLISH", at this place, absolutely nobody was doing that, which was a little odd.
Anyway, finally got into the main tax room, which was full of people and tables and terminals and more people and more tables and more papers, and the guy said "well, do you have any forms?" and I said no, and he said "can you file on the computer?" and I said probably, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to read it all well enough, and he said "whatever, go stand in this line" and pointed me at a line, and I stood in that for another 10-15 minutes.
Finally I get to the table, which turns out to be the "table where we determine if you can just go use the computer to file". I try to explain my situation. The guy doesn't quite get it, asks me a few questions. I have no clue what the hell he's asking, because, as I've said many times before, I have a really bizarre Japanese vocabulary subset that includes obscure things about sports and trains and includes absolutely nothing about taxes and business.
He gives up and yells out a name across the room, summoning some other clerk to the table.
That clerk actually speaks some English. Not a ton, but it's clear he's studied his tax vocabulary in English. He quickly figures out what's going on. "You only had one source of income in Japan this year?" he says. I nod. "Do you have life insurance or social insurance?" I tell him no. "Are you married? Have family here?" I also tell him no. "Is this the only tax paper you have?" Yeah, I confirm, it's the only one I have.
The two clerks look at each other, like "...duh, just go put her on a computer, this should be easy", and the English-speaking guy tells me to come with him and he'll help me figure it all out.
Which he does. I have to register for an online taxpayer ID, which wasn't too hard, but then came the part where I had to log in and enter the tax information and so on, and that was a bit harder for me to read, so the English-speaking guy says "I'll do it for you -- actually, I need you to fill out a paper anyway, can I have your gaijin card?" and he takes my gaijin card and photocopies it, and gives me a paper which basically I write down how long I've been in Japan, how long I've lived in Kita-ku, what my visa status is, etc. The only problem is, I could not remember exactly when I went home to be with my dad over the winter of 2008-2009, which was one of the things they asked, but he said it didn't really matter. Huh. In the meantime, he's conveniently filled out my online tax form, and it turns out that I'm getting a tax return! A whopping 8000 yen or so, which is like $90! Woohoo! So we put my postal savings number in there and apparently it'll just automatically get sent to me in a few weeks.
I asked him if he was an interpreter or what, and he said no, he'd just studied some English conversation and how to translate the tax stuff. I told him he spoke really well and asked whether a lot of foreigners come into the Kita-ku tax office. He said that there weren't all that many, maybe only one or two per day, usually.
So, that was great, except that they wanted to take my tax slip and everything and I had no copies of it, and they can't photocopy it for me, so I ended up walking for like 10 minutes to the nearest 7-11 to use their photocopier, then I came back to the building and waited in a much shorter line, handed in my papers, and that was it! I was done.
The only thing is, I have no clue if I'm going to get hit with another huge tax thingy like I was last summer, when the city of Kawaguchi sent me this thing saying "You owe us 130,000 yen in taxes for last year". I can't imagine I won't, and Tokyo's might be even higher :( But at least I believe I'm done with taxes on the national level.
And there was another white dude getting in line as I was leaving. Although it sounded like he spoke a lot better Japanese than me, and he even HAD a form with him. Wow.
After I finished taxes, I decided to quickly run down to Korakuen and the Tokyo Dome and check on a few things -- namely, did they have Block People at an arcade there (they do!!!), and was it possible to get tickets at JCB Hall for events there (it's not!!!!) and maybe pick up tickets to the Fighters-Marines preseason game on Saturday (hooraay!!!!) I also stopped at Yamashita, got this year's Fighters Guide and also this awesome ファイターズ手帳 which is basically a calendar/planner book, only it has the Fighters schedule in it!! This is awesome because I usually draw these things out for myself on paper, with the Fighters schedule and then any other teams I want to see... now it's all in a book already neatly done for me! I admit I'm not used to using a planner, but I'll try to get there, I suppose. Plus this one has all kinds of neat trivia about the team as well, for me to study.
Anyway, came home after that, stopped to get a tempura bento on the way, then talked to Mike on Skype for a little while until it was time for him to sleep, and then... I ended up falling asleep around 7:30pm too. Just was tired and being as I was already sitting on my bed and was cold and felt like hiding under the blankets anyway, I was out pretty quickly. Slept for like 12 hours, then got up this morning. Whee. I was going to go to Jingu today, but the forecast is like, low 40's and raining, so I think I'll stay at home again or find somewhere else to go...
starkodama's Monday afternoon trip to the ward office... :)I would have written this last night, but I fell asleep at 7:30pm instead.
Okay, so this story kind of starts back in late December, when I was going through papers and sorting things here, and found an envelope from my workplace, sent out with my November 25 paystub, saying "If you want us to do your taxes for you, please fill out this form and send it back no later than December 2. Otherwise it is your responsibility to go to the tax office yourself in March". Even if I'd opened the damn thing on time, I still might not have gotten it in on time. Grrr. It's kind of annoying because two years in a row, GEOS did my taxes for me -- and they would have the forms AT the school for us and send us emails like every day until we sent in our damn forms, because they didn't want us screwing it up. But this time, no email, no nothing, just that one paper in the one paystub letter.
So, fine. Go to the tax office in March. I figured I could handle that, except for one slight problem, that being: where the hell IS my tax office, and what the hell am I supposed to bring?
Fortunately, after my last pay stub in January, they also sent a slip with it summarizing my pay for the year and how much tax had been taken out. I figured that must be relevant, but didn't know why, so I brought it along... along with my Kawaguchi paid tax slips from last year, and my final pay stub, and the English forms they'd sent me in the mail, and so on.
Not knowing where my tax office was, I went to the next best thing: the Kita-ku kuyakusho, or ward administration building, which is in Oji, 6 minutes by train. It's kind of like a mini-city-hall for the Kita area of Tokyo, where I live. I figured if nothing else, they could at least point me in the right direction.
The first place they pointed me was actually the 2nd floor of the kuyakusho building, when I said basically, "I need to do something with taxes". This resulted in my spending 10 minutes talking to a nice lady who, when she finally figured out what the hell I was trying to convey (namely, "My company told me to go deal with my taxes on my own and I have no idea what I'm doing and all I have is this paper with my income reported on it, and only the one job and no life insurance or any other such crap"), said "You're in the wrong place. You need to go to the actual tax office, which is way the hell on the other side of Oji station," and handed me a map.
Well, that's fair, I figured, and so I set on my way to walk about 20 minutes to this other place. Got there, and there was a huge line out the door, so I waited in that. Fortunately, the tax office is right across the street from a high school, and their baseball club was practicing, so I watched that while waiting to get into the actual building. Once I got into the building I spent probably 20-30 minutes waiting in line worried to death I was going to end up in the wrong place. I didn't have any forms, couldn't read the ones that were there, didn't see a damn thing in English, and unlike most other places in Japan where people go "OMG A WHITE FACE, LET ME SPEAK TO YOU IN ENGLISH", at this place, absolutely nobody was doing that, which was a little odd.
Anyway, finally got into the main tax room, which was full of people and tables and terminals and more people and more tables and more papers, and the guy said "well, do you have any forms?" and I said no, and he said "can you file on the computer?" and I said probably, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to read it all well enough, and he said "whatever, go stand in this line" and pointed me at a line, and I stood in that for another 10-15 minutes.
Finally I get to the table, which turns out to be the "table where we determine if you can just go use the computer to file". I try to explain my situation. The guy doesn't quite get it, asks me a few questions. I have no clue what the hell he's asking, because, as I've said many times before, I have a really bizarre Japanese vocabulary subset that includes obscure things about sports and trains and includes absolutely nothing about taxes and business.
He gives up and yells out a name across the room, summoning some other clerk to the table.
That clerk actually speaks some English. Not a ton, but it's clear he's studied his tax vocabulary in English. He quickly figures out what's going on. "You only had one source of income in Japan this year?" he says. I nod. "Do you have life insurance or social insurance?" I tell him no. "Are you married? Have family here?" I also tell him no. "Is this the only tax paper you have?" Yeah, I confirm, it's the only one I have.
The two clerks look at each other, like "...duh, just go put her on a computer, this should be easy", and the English-speaking guy tells me to come with him and he'll help me figure it all out.
Which he does. I have to register for an online taxpayer ID, which wasn't too hard, but then came the part where I had to log in and enter the tax information and so on, and that was a bit harder for me to read, so the English-speaking guy says "I'll do it for you -- actually, I need you to fill out a paper anyway, can I have your gaijin card?" and he takes my gaijin card and photocopies it, and gives me a paper which basically I write down how long I've been in Japan, how long I've lived in Kita-ku, what my visa status is, etc. The only problem is, I could not remember exactly when I went home to be with my dad over the winter of 2008-2009, which was one of the things they asked, but he said it didn't really matter. Huh. In the meantime, he's conveniently filled out my online tax form, and it turns out that I'm getting a tax return! A whopping 8000 yen or so, which is like $90! Woohoo! So we put my postal savings number in there and apparently it'll just automatically get sent to me in a few weeks.
I asked him if he was an interpreter or what, and he said no, he'd just studied some English conversation and how to translate the tax stuff. I told him he spoke really well and asked whether a lot of foreigners come into the Kita-ku tax office. He said that there weren't all that many, maybe only one or two per day, usually.
So, that was great, except that they wanted to take my tax slip and everything and I had no copies of it, and they can't photocopy it for me, so I ended up walking for like 10 minutes to the nearest 7-11 to use their photocopier, then I came back to the building and waited in a much shorter line, handed in my papers, and that was it! I was done.
The only thing is, I have no clue if I'm going to get hit with another huge tax thingy like I was last summer, when the city of Kawaguchi sent me this thing saying "You owe us 130,000 yen in taxes for last year". I can't imagine I won't, and Tokyo's might be even higher :( But at least I believe I'm done with taxes on the national level.
And there was another white dude getting in line as I was leaving. Although it sounded like he spoke a lot better Japanese than me, and he even HAD a form with him. Wow.
After I finished taxes, I decided to quickly run down to Korakuen and the Tokyo Dome and check on a few things -- namely, did they have Block People at an arcade there (they do!!!), and was it possible to get tickets at JCB Hall for events there (it's not!!!!) and maybe pick up tickets to the Fighters-Marines preseason game on Saturday (hooraay!!!!) I also stopped at Yamashita, got this year's Fighters Guide and also this awesome ファイターズ手帳 which is basically a calendar/planner book, only it has the Fighters schedule in it!! This is awesome because I usually draw these things out for myself on paper, with the Fighters schedule and then any other teams I want to see... now it's all in a book already neatly done for me! I admit I'm not used to using a planner, but I'll try to get there, I suppose. Plus this one has all kinds of neat trivia about the team as well, for me to study.
Anyway, came home after that, stopped to get a tempura bento on the way, then talked to Mike on Skype for a little while until it was time for him to sleep, and then... I ended up falling asleep around 7:30pm too. Just was tired and being as I was already sitting on my bed and was cold and felt like hiding under the blankets anyway, I was out pretty quickly. Slept for like 12 hours, then got up this morning. Whee. I was going to go to Jingu today, but the forecast is like, low 40's and raining, so I think I'll stay at home again or find somewhere else to go...
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I made very little money last year. Less than 2 million yen. The 130000 year I made about 3 million, I think.
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