Today marks the 20th anniversary.
On that day twenty years ago I was in
On this day twenty years later, approx. 150,000 people held a candlelight vigil in Victoria Park,
I am wondering whether Uncle Hoi and Aunty Anna attended the vigil.
The messenger from the courier company came to collect our collective forms in one shipment to be couriered to KL.
Once again all of us can have some peace for another year before this annual affair repeats itself again.
Next year there is no more manual filing. Everyone has to use e-filing.
All my colleagues had already passed to me their forms so that we can courier to KL at the same time.
Tonight I finished filling in the form. My initial estimate was correct. I had to pay more than three times income tax as compared to 2007. I wish my income was three times more though. Fat chance, wishful thinking only!
Still I thank God for the income earned in 2008, though a little bit of bonus is still outstanding.
Reminder to everyone that your Form BE ie. Return Form of an Individual (Resident Who Does Not Carry on Business) for Year of Assessment 2008 will be due at the end of next month.
I did a rough estimation of how much balance of income tax I have to pay to IRD.
My income for 2008 increased by approx. 30% as compared to income for 2007. But this time round I have to pay 3x more income tax of what I paid last year for income for 2007. Argh!
Recently I posted about all employees who are contributing to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) have the liberty to choose to contribute either 8% or 11% of the monthly salary from end of this month onwards for two years. The Government thinks that by putting more money in the people’s pocket, they would spend the money and boost the economy.
But from end of this month onwards as well, all employees are paying more monthly income tax as compared to last year.
So on one hand the Government wants the people to have more money to spend but on the other hand the Government wants people to pay higher tax.
Does it make sense or not?
Does the Government know what they are doing?
The mind boggles …
Recently there was a government circular out mentioning that everyone who contributes to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) has a choice to reduce their individual contribution by 3% ie. from 11% to 8%.
For those who chose to maintain their contribution at 11%, they are required to fill in a form to declare their status quo. For those who wish to contribute 8%, they do not have to do anything.
I had prepared the forms to be signed by each employee without asking their preference because I thought everyone would want to remain at their status quo. Most people would prefer to contribute more actually and not less. But two people did not sign and so I had to prepare the forms all over again.
This has thought me not to presume anything. Everyone is different and each has the right to make their own choice eventhough I may not agree with it.
A week ago I received a phone call from an officer from IRD informing me that they would be coming to the office to audit the company payroll for last year and this year up to last month.
So from then onwards I had been busy making sure everything single piece of payroll was in order, in case any that did not have signature. I found some and told the respective persons to sign them.
Yesterday the officer called up to say that they would be coming in the afternoon instead of the morning as stated in the letter since they had a meeting in the morning.
Three officers (one woman and two men, all Malays) came at 2.45p.m. The lady was the one who asked all the questions while the men were just sitting there like ‘decoration’.
The normal practice of working out staff monthly income tax is to deduct the Employee’s Provident Fund (EPF) amount from the gross salary before looking at the Income Tax Table. But my company’s practice is using the gross amount without deducting the EPF amount.
Therefore each month each individual employee is paying more than the required amount of tax. We all prefer it this way because that means we would not have to fork out as much by the end of the year when we lodge in the income tax form.
The officers were happy to find out we practice this way. They only stayed for half an hour and had to go to two other places before the end of the working day.
I was extremely relieved after they left. I did not do anything wrong. Just having them around gave me the jitter.
Now he should understand how the public feel regarding these public transport systems.
The KTM (trains) in my opinion are too old and move too slow. More often than not, they usually arrive later than the scheduled time. I am not surprised that people can fall asleep standing up riding on them.
Eventhough the LRT (Light Rail Transit) (monorail) is considered quite new, I find that each of them do not have enough carriages and therefore most of the time there would be so many people ‘sardined’ into them. The air-conditioners inside the monorail may be on full blast until most people would find it too cold.
But it is another story at the station itself while passengers are waiting for it to arrive. The ventiliation at the station is much less to be desired and it is just like a cooking pot with the fire being put to the highest knob. I was always wary that I may faint while waiting for the monorail to arrive because I could hardly breathe most of the time.
Let’s wait and see what improvements would be made to these public transport systems.
