Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Pension, Taxes and dirty laundry

I tried writing this post last night but got about six sentences done before I started doing other more important things.
Sigh.
………

Dad and Myrna took off to Tokyo yesterday morning. They are flying out of Narita tomorrow. Li arranged for a very nice hotel for them across from the main station. This hotel also offers a whole variety of English language guided tours around the city through out the day.
They are having fun and doing just great. The weather has also been quite good for them. I think today they were going to go for a stroll through the Imperial Gardens as well.

I had a holiday yesterday as well as Li, so he and I headed out with a very well behaved ToddlerJi in tow to attack all the government offices.
Yesterday was a pension money day.
I cant do this subject justice in this post today but I will definitely come back to it once I return to Canada. BASICALLY, In Japan you must pay pension money and when you leave Japan you only get a percent of that money back in a lump sum deposit. There is paper work to fill that has been nicely done in English. These papers can’t be filled until I land in Canada though.
There are many little quirks and quacks about the pension money for foreigners here that I will return to. It is something that I think foreigners already in Japan or about to go to Japan should know about.

You pension money is taxed (of course) when it is given to you but you are allowed to file a tax return to get most of that money back even though you are out of the country. We needed to go to the tax office and get the paper work organized that will allow our darling friend Jean be my tax submitter person.

All not very painless: just time consuming.

After Li and ToddlarJi spent some time together so that I could drag two large blankets to the Laundromat. I used my wait time there to get most of the paperwork done for the shipping company. Li helped with the papers last night, so things are almost done there. I need to email the shipping guy right after I finish this post.

I need to do a bunch of photocopying for them as well.

I think we have about 7 more boxes to pack. Four of them are already packed they just need to be reorganized and some tough love needs to be done by me.

We also bought a new stereo and MP3 player. Hehehe. We have been debating if we could afford it and decided we could. The stereo and MP3 work together to do automatic download so I don’t have to use my computer. I really loved this feature. We got this MP3 player and this DVD/CD/MD stereo in wood.
YAAA!!!!


I do have a question for you all:
Should I keep all of my paperwork that I have about all the bills I have paid here in Japan? I have all my gas, water, electrical, credit card statements. I also have all of my salary slips.
Part of me wants to keep it for sentimental reasons, a part of me thinks I should keep it because of tax reasons back in Canada, and another part of me says burn it all.
What do you think?

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Posted by (Top)Andrea::4/18/2006 :: 12 Comments:

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