However, all that is powerless in the face of red tape. I already knew that the IRAS website operate only during office hours, but within five minutes of returning home and trying to contact our friendly neighbourhood tax-collector, I learned that its 1800-line is empowered to summarily decide that because "we are experiencing an exceptionally high volume of calls", it shall promptly disconnect you! Just like that! "Please call back later." Fuck. What's to stop the volume of calls from being even more exceptional later, huh?
By the way, I wasn't trying to reach an operator, I was punching in options to try to navigate the abstruse telephone system. It was the 1800-line that decided to refer me to an operator in the first place, only to contemptuously toss me back into the limbo of taxation ignorance in which I dwell.
And I wouldn't have had to call them in the first place if they hadn't assumed, based on the income one earned two financial years ago, to charge Terz a buttload of taxes based on money he hasn't earned since he quit the money-making job more than a year ago. Is this how our government encourages small-time entrepreneurs then? By taxing them for the money they would've earned in the high-paying, risk-free jobs that they left in order to be entrepreneurs?
If the government refuses to take my calls because of "an exceptionally high volume of calls", can I then withhold my taxes from then till they clarify our tax situation? This isn't about anything as lofty as civil disobedience; it's just about a fair trade.
Just wait till Terz gets back and blows his top at them.
2 Comments:
I had 6 engaged tones, 8 exceptionally high/cuts offs and 2 calls that got through after 30 mins on hold before i spoke to a human being.
Oh ya, the first on hold i had to pee so i had to hang up.
Total questions asked : 4
Total time spent getting thru: the whole afternoon
Deanna who does not have a blogger account but had to comment on this.
I tried exactly what you are proposing when our beloved IRAS overcharged me. I wrote a stiff letter to them and withheld payment. BAM! I got a letter saying they would charge me extra unless I paid up regardless of the error, which would have to be dealt with via proper channels. So I said that's ridiculous and held on until I got my rebate. I also got a letter warning me not to do it again, and that I was wrong to withhold payment and I could go to jail for it. The whole thing really pissed me off.
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