March 16, 2024 - Week 8

Month 2 survived!

More administrative tasks awaited me this week - my journey back to the Tax Administration of Jamaica to retrieve my long-awaited Tax card. Thankfully, the Tax Office was only a block down from the school. However, it was only on my third attempt lining up that I was able to get my card...

The first attempt was at 11AM. I thought I had timed it perfectly. As the tax office opens at 8.30AM, the first batch of people would have gone through, however, as I was in line with an angry man in front of me and was burning in the sun (yes, there was a line outside in the 31-celsius sun into the tax office) I gave up. For context, the man was angry because he had to pay his traffic ticket, but the online system was down so he had to pay at the tax office in person. This meant that he also gave up a day's worth of wages - an expensive ticket indeed. I noticed a lot of people were also paying for items in person and the cashier counter count was more than the tax office counter count. This is one of the symptoms of distrust of financial institutions, after a week of reconciling my bank balance with expected cash and finding differences, I also don't trust the banks...

On my third attempt, I retrieved my card within 30 minutes. I was expecting a nice plastic card and was instead presented with a paper card slotted into a plastic cover. My second assumption was expecting them to capture the card collection in their online database and was surprised to be asked to sign my name in an exercise book where they manually recorded card collections for the year (and in no particular order, just time of pickup). I sure am glad I am not responsible for auditing or managing their information system!

And that's enough tax talk for one post!