Today was the day to attempt to resolve a long standing
issue with my 2012 Chilean tax documentation.
In Australian terms, there was apparently an issue with the tax return
lodged during 2013 whereby it couldn’t be processed. The issue was complicated by a change in
accountants being used by my employer during 2012, from PWC to Montt. After lodging the return in the middle of
2013, Montt discovered it couldn’t be processed due to an error in monthly tax
payments that were short in one month, followed by an overpayment the following
month. Which of the companies was
responsible was never satisfactorily explained.
Regardless of fault, it had to be fixed. PWC had first crack at it, until they got
bored and declared that since they were no longer the company accountants, they
couldn’t help further. Montt then tried
to resolve it, before getting bored and the person responsible left the
company. After a further period of
inaction, I requested another attempt.
Being Chile, no-one could find the relevant documentation and all had to
be compiled again, including original documents being sent to Chile at not
insignificant cost. Eventually this
third lot of accountants got bored and declared they were unable to fix it.
In exasperation, we visited the Servicio Impuestos Internos
(“Sii” - the Chilean tax office) in Temuco in an attempt to see if it could be
sorted out. On arrival, we pulled out
ticket number and commenced waiting. We
had number 44, and the counter was serving 20.
Hmmm, how long might that mean?
After an hour, the number had advanced to around 24… A long wait beckoned.
The typical Chilean is well accustomed to long queue’s in,
well, everything here that involves some sort of bureaucracy. This doesn’t stop them from trying to jump
ahead in any queue, particularly those in this type of situation. They will go an pester a clerk/operative who
is attending another person, with an oh-so-polite “Excuse me, but could you
please answer this tiny little question/query that I have about my problem?”. The average operative is well used to this
and will show significant disdain, but normally will try to answer the
question, while the person who is being jumped over gives a resigned
shrug. After taking up a disproportionate
amount of time, the person trying to jump-in will be told that it is too hard
and they have to continue waiting.
Unless of course, they can get sent somewhere else to have their problem
sorted straight away, usually by someone coming back from a break or if there
is an opportunity to jump in between clients.
So much for the ticket queue.
So, of course Andrea decided to attempt this. She identified someone in a desk towards the
back of the office who may have been a section boss and went and hassled
him. He agreed to answer the questions,
entered the relevant data and then concluded he was sorry he couldn’t help, but
someone should be able to, and we’d have to go back to the line. The appearance of helping while doing nothing
now complete, he went back to whatever he was doing (or perhaps wasn't).
After 2 hours of waiting, our number finally came up. We went and spoke to the nice lady who was
very helpful, and for the first time, identified the problem. Apparently the tax return was lodged, but
there was no back-up evidence to corroborate the salary and tax figures on the
tax return. Of course, I didn’t have
that with me. It was not something I
ever had, but something that the accountants had. The lady said that it was a bit odd, but she
would talk to her boss, sitting right behind her (but occupied with another
client). We went back to waiting. Another 10 minutes passed and she spoke to
the boss and then called us over. It
turned out he could see documents in the system, but she couldn’t due to
authority levels. If we could change our
address to something local, then she should be able to see them and then
process the tax return. It took nearly
half an hour to change the address details due to a faulty computer system, but
once it was done and we sat down with the lady, it was sorted in 5
minutes. Tax return processed, my tax
issues now cleared, and a small return to boot!
Unbelievable. That
fact that we could sort it out so easily (apart from the waiting times), yet 3
teams of accountants from 2 high-powered accounting firms were unable to
screams PURE IDIOTIC INCOMPETENCE on their behalf. Welcome to it.
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