Taxation 101 - Part 3

Third part of my taxation series...

I found myself back within the creepy walls of BIR Manila. This time I was early. I arrived a little past 8AM.

I went up to the 5th floor, where RDO-029 is located.

When I gave my forms, the officer told me to make the payment first. She gave me a payment form and after I completed the form, I went to the ground floor for the payment.

For taxpayers' convenience, there's a Landbank branch inside the BIR building, with a whopping "2" tellers.

It was still closed when I got there but there were already around 50 or so people waiting. These people were divided into 2 groups, one with bulk forms and the other for few forms.

The tellers are divided this way as well, so technically only 1 teller processes all the payments.

At first I didn't know about this setup, so I found myself joining the bulk forms group. When the bank opened, the guard came out with a piece of paper, which would contain the list of people.

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The moment he came out, chaos broke out, and everyone was trying to get their name on the list through some forms of flirting with guard.

I went to see what's happening and one of the "hired fixers" approached me and asked how many forms will I be processing.

I just call them "hired fixers" since they've probably been hired by business owners to go through the tedious process of lining-up for hours, and stamping hundreds of forms.

So I told her I only have one form. She was surprised and told me that I was in the wrong line. My innocent look seems to have some advantages. >:)

I transferred to the other line but I was already 41st. Some of those guys were already there even as early as 7AM. That was a really bad sign. :(

True enough, I waited from 9AM until 11:45AM before I reached the teller. It was a grueling experience. I'll explain why in my next post, but somehow I was able to endure it, thanks to "The Secret". :)

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After I made the payment, I ran back to the registration unit at the 5th floor. It was 11:50AM.

But to my disappointment, some guy who is not even in proper uniform told me get a photocopy of the payment form first. I asked them if they have a copier somewhere and he replied to me that all of their copiers have no inks.

At that moment I wanted to tell that guy "f*ck you", but I was able to control myself. I knew he was lying, just to make sure I wouldn't be consuming some of their lunch break. I just hope he doesn't get home alive. Just kidding. O:)

So I left the building in search of a copy machine. I was expecting several copiers around the area but to my surprise there were only two, and they're charging 2 pesos per page. O_o

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I had lunch at Port Area Grill and stayed for a few minutes before heading back to BIR. It didn't took me more than 15 minutes to have my registration processed.

However, I still need to come back for the Certificate of Registration and for the printed official receipts, which somehow, was the source of corruption for the low rank officers.

The BIR officer just took a scratch paper and gave it to me as a receipt for the printing service. I didn't know printing some few pages of receipts would cost 950 pesos. O_o

Anyhow, that was the end of part 3. I still have a couple of things to share but I'll just include them in my next post.

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To be continued...