Beaurocracy

Beaurocracy was Originally Posted on February 15, 2013 by lavarock

I file a General Excise Tax form twice a year, showing how much income I have made. It is similar to, but not a sales tax report. The report files in July covers the January to Jun and the January filing report covers July to December.

I also must file a report in January of my totals for the year means means you go to Report one and report two, add line 1’s together and put that on line 1 of the yearly report.

You may not think this is such a big deal, but both my 1st half and 2nd half filings are done online. How stupid a computer program or system that can’t add two numbers together, numbers it already is storing?

So then I have to write a check to send to them. They charge money to pay by credit card. I had ING Direct (an online bank) cut them a check and mail it in an envelope. It got there Jan 30th. I get a mailing from the state department of Taxation on Feb 7th saying that they have not received the check. If they don’t get the check by the 20th, they will start charging me interest and penalties.

The problem is, they also say that once they receive the check, it takes 4 weeks to actually enter that information into the computer! HUH!

Hawaii is a relatively small state ranking 40th in terms of population. With less than a million and a half people, just how many businesses are there that it takes them 4 weeks to enter a check into the system?

If you go to Walmart and hand them a check, they zip it through a machine and it is in their system. A simple solution for Hawaii would be a barcode scanner and a check scanner. I bet one person could scan booth the check and the account number in seconds, keeping in mind that many people pay by credit card where there is no issue.

Yes, I could pay by credit card, but there is a $1 charge PLUS 2.4% of the amount charged, added to the bill. In some cases you may not want to pay for credit card charges.