It is tax time again, and this year I received a nice big package of paperwork from my local tax office, including lots of forms in English and Japanese, and a 60 page guidebook on how to fill out my taxes.
Last year I went to the local tax office, filled out my information on one of their computers and I was done in 20 minutes. This year, I couldn’t find any information about that system, just lots of information on a new tax system that they have implemented.
Now, in the interest of simplicity we just file our own taxes, and if you have trouble you go to a special building that they have set aside for helping out people with the new system. My biggest concern was, what happened to my computer filing? They do have e-filing in Japan, but you need to download a big software package to your computer, and that to me is just too 1995.
So I set out today with all my paperwork to the place where they were consulting on the new system, and it was filled with old people. I’m not a big fan of old people, but I guess they were pretty confused by the new system, too. I take a number, I wait in a chair for 30 minutes, and then they call my number and I wait in another chair for somebody to come help me. I can see by the format that once a clerk is free they will roll their chair over to the next open desk (mine) so I wait. And wait, and wait.
It starts to dawn on me that nobody wants to finish with their current customer because then they’d have to go deal with me. I’ll admit, the odds were in their favor that I would be a pain to deal with. Probably don’t speak Japanese, probably will have a very complex tax issue to deal with involving marriages, immigration, children of different nationalities, international tax treaties, etc. Better to stick with the old folks with the easy returns. So I was waiting.
I noticed that a few of the higher ups had noticed me, and after a while a guy came up behind me and asked me if I spoke Japanese. He offered me a little advice on filling out my return, but I jumped on the chance and asked him what happened to the very convenient computer system they had before. He smiled and said they still had it – I just had to go back to the tax office I went to last year. He said in a low voice that most of the people here were afraid of computers so this was set up to help people that like to do things the old fashioned way. That explains a lot.
So I’ll make another trek out to the tax office on Wednesday, but the funny thing about the whole situation is that I knew enough Japanese to figure out that they had a new system, but not enough to realize that some things are still the same, like the computers in the tax office. On my way out of the office an old guy talked to me in English, and it was funny to see that once the ice was broken, lots of people offered to help me.
Always interesting around here…
