What the disabled people and he unemployed have to go through to avoid the hike…

The situation in tax offices is reminiscent of the theater of the absurd, with disabled people coming in by the thousands after mistakenly receiving the finance ministry’s letter, which asks them to pay the hike.

The tax company’s letter might have informed those who wrongly received the notification as to what to do in such a case, but it did not warn them about the marathon of suffering for more than two hours. 

Hundreds of the unemployed rushed to their tax offices to prove their situation. After having stood on a long queue, they stoically waited to reach the desk to make photocopies of their documents, to get a file number and eventually submit the request/objection. 

But employees informed them that their papers were not accepted and that they are obliged only to file the confirmation of their benefit from OAED. 

The same thing happened with disabled people. When their turn came up, they found that the tax office wanted disability certificates from the prefecture and not from their insurance fund.

But even those whose objections and supporting documents were accepted did not receive the correction on the spot by the tax office employee, but must expect it to come with the new statement from KEPYO. There are cases where it is revealed that the trade tax fee is to be paid in half because of termination, or that no car tax is owed due to its oldness. 

However, public servants recommend 2 options in these cases as well: 

    

* pay the amount of debt as indicated in the statement and expect a tax refund from tax authorities (when and if this gets authorized)

    

* wait for the new statement to pay the corrected amount, the difference being that they will receive it in October, so by default they will have to pay in installments and therefore not have the discount they would have benefited from had they paid everything at once

But this way the state loses its chance to collect more money directly, as the tax employee could issue a duplicate and pay the citizen on the spot and then send the old statement and supporting documents back to the GSIS.