I’m leaving Kenya in 10 days, but doing that has just become a great deal more complicated. Why? Well, it starts with paying my taxes.
Our finance guru has been working on my tax worksheet, and after some discussions as to what money was spent where and from what source, we finally seemed to come to a total. Here you are taxed on the money you spend, not on the money you earn. That is an interesting concept.
Near the end of these discussions, our tax guru came in. He had been out checking on the procedure for leaving finally. Now I’ve left Kenya numerous times and will still have about 6 months on my residence permit when I leave this time. However, if after I have left, it is found that I owe tax, then my organization gets hit with the bill. Of course they would pass that on to me, but it is better to have things sorted before I depart.
It seems I must pay a personal visit to the tax office in my area and tell them face to face that I am leaving finally. I also have to promise that if I return as a resident I will tell them and continue paying taxes. However, before I can go have that friendly little chat, I have to pay all the taxes I owe. Fine.
In trying to account for payments already made, I checked the web for my ledger to see if what I had overpaid last year was being counted. Indeed it is. However, I had another document indicating that last February I had paid about $40 for my first installment. The hitch was that I didn’t have a receipt from the bank and there was no indication on the ledger that it had been paid. Hmmm. I had been asking for the receipt for some months. Today, I had to bring it to a head and find out what was going on. It seems that the person who took my cash to the bank couldn’t get a receipt because the power was off or something wasn’t working. So, he had left the cash with the teller with the assurance it would be paid into the account. Apparently that never happened. Oh dear! I have now been assured that I will be recompensed and they will follow up on the missing money.
Then comes the matter of how much money will I need to finish out my last 10 days AND pay my taxes. Yes, I’m being taxed on the money I take out of the bank to pay my taxes. That has to be included in the final total so that the amount of tax owed is correct, but of course it also changes the total owed. Sigh.
In addition to all this, my car was out having a part replaced, so even if I did know what the amount should be, I wasn’t really in a position to go to the bank to pay that amount. Further, by the time I had paid for my lunch and the charges for the car repair, I only had $10, which wasn’t enough to even get started. I’m also nearly out of fuel in the car.
So, in thinking through what I need to do tomorrow, I realized that with the withdrawal limits on my card, I needed to get some money out today and the rest tomorrow. So, despite my personal fuel crisis, I drove to the nearest bank and withdrew some money. If tomorrow goes well, I should have paid my debts to Kenya and others, bought some fuel and MIGHT have a little money left.
Tomorrow, I have to generate a tax form from the internet and then I can take that down to the bank to pay it in. Now what was the Kenya revenue service account number???
Once I have the receipt to show I paid, I can schedule the appointment for the little chat with the taxman. Since he has NO idea how much I spent this last year, he just has my word for it that I’ve paid in full. Apparently they are fairly trusting, and if all goes well, he will give me a tax clearance form. I will leave Kenya as I always do and they will never know the difference.
In the midst of all of this chaos, someone came by to look at my car to see if he wanted to purchase it. The odometer says 158,000 km. However, there was a sticker I had never noticed, probably because it was in Japanese. It indicated that in 2011 the car had 150,000 km on it. Obviously someone had been turning back the odometer, and now we have no idea how many miles it has traveled. Then my potential buyer had a look at the tag at the bottom of the drivers’ seatbelt. Did you know there was a tag? Seatbelts are almost always original with the car. My logbook says the car was made in 1994. The seatbelt said it was made in 1999. So now, I have no idea when my car was built or how far it has been driven. Now those should be strong selling points! I’ll give him time to give me an offer, if he decides to. I have one standing offer for less than I would like, but at the moment, I’m inclined to take it and run!
Please can tomorrow be a little more sane than today. My brain is seriously fried!
Our finance guru has been working on my tax worksheet, and after some discussions as to what money was spent where and from what source, we finally seemed to come to a total. Here you are taxed on the money you spend, not on the money you earn. That is an interesting concept.
Near the end of these discussions, our tax guru came in. He had been out checking on the procedure for leaving finally. Now I’ve left Kenya numerous times and will still have about 6 months on my residence permit when I leave this time. However, if after I have left, it is found that I owe tax, then my organization gets hit with the bill. Of course they would pass that on to me, but it is better to have things sorted before I depart.
It seems I must pay a personal visit to the tax office in my area and tell them face to face that I am leaving finally. I also have to promise that if I return as a resident I will tell them and continue paying taxes. However, before I can go have that friendly little chat, I have to pay all the taxes I owe. Fine.
In trying to account for payments already made, I checked the web for my ledger to see if what I had overpaid last year was being counted. Indeed it is. However, I had another document indicating that last February I had paid about $40 for my first installment. The hitch was that I didn’t have a receipt from the bank and there was no indication on the ledger that it had been paid. Hmmm. I had been asking for the receipt for some months. Today, I had to bring it to a head and find out what was going on. It seems that the person who took my cash to the bank couldn’t get a receipt because the power was off or something wasn’t working. So, he had left the cash with the teller with the assurance it would be paid into the account. Apparently that never happened. Oh dear! I have now been assured that I will be recompensed and they will follow up on the missing money.
Then comes the matter of how much money will I need to finish out my last 10 days AND pay my taxes. Yes, I’m being taxed on the money I take out of the bank to pay my taxes. That has to be included in the final total so that the amount of tax owed is correct, but of course it also changes the total owed. Sigh.
In addition to all this, my car was out having a part replaced, so even if I did know what the amount should be, I wasn’t really in a position to go to the bank to pay that amount. Further, by the time I had paid for my lunch and the charges for the car repair, I only had $10, which wasn’t enough to even get started. I’m also nearly out of fuel in the car.
So, in thinking through what I need to do tomorrow, I realized that with the withdrawal limits on my card, I needed to get some money out today and the rest tomorrow. So, despite my personal fuel crisis, I drove to the nearest bank and withdrew some money. If tomorrow goes well, I should have paid my debts to Kenya and others, bought some fuel and MIGHT have a little money left.
Tomorrow, I have to generate a tax form from the internet and then I can take that down to the bank to pay it in. Now what was the Kenya revenue service account number???
Once I have the receipt to show I paid, I can schedule the appointment for the little chat with the taxman. Since he has NO idea how much I spent this last year, he just has my word for it that I’ve paid in full. Apparently they are fairly trusting, and if all goes well, he will give me a tax clearance form. I will leave Kenya as I always do and they will never know the difference.
In the midst of all of this chaos, someone came by to look at my car to see if he wanted to purchase it. The odometer says 158,000 km. However, there was a sticker I had never noticed, probably because it was in Japanese. It indicated that in 2011 the car had 150,000 km on it. Obviously someone had been turning back the odometer, and now we have no idea how many miles it has traveled. Then my potential buyer had a look at the tag at the bottom of the drivers’ seatbelt. Did you know there was a tag? Seatbelts are almost always original with the car. My logbook says the car was made in 1994. The seatbelt said it was made in 1999. So now, I have no idea when my car was built or how far it has been driven. Now those should be strong selling points! I’ll give him time to give me an offer, if he decides to. I have one standing offer for less than I would like, but at the moment, I’m inclined to take it and run!
Please can tomorrow be a little more sane than today. My brain is seriously fried!
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