Monthly Archives: February 2009

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Sales tax and stimulus in Taiwan

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Just a couple of loosely-related things that were interesting in Taiwan.

A bi-monthly lottery encourages people to ask for their sales receipt (and thus pay sales tax). All sales receipts are printed/embossed with a number and an official seal. Like most lotteries here, there’s a grand prize for matching all numbers and lesser prizes for partial matches.

taiwan-sales-receipts
Originally posted on flickr by shimmertje.

They recently rolled out an economic stimulus program intended to get people shopping. People were issued vouchers that could only be used for purchases (no saving!) and excluded certain items like alcohol and cigarettes. The expiration date on the vouchers ensure that the stimulus is fully injected into the economy by a certain date. It’s not cheap; each voucher has the security and anti-counterfeiting features of money.

Useful Stuff

E-file your California tax return for free

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E-file your California tax return for free

If you live in California, you probably qualify to use CalFile, the Franchise Tax Board’s free e-file service for filing your California tax return.

Who qualifies to use CalFile? You can if you:

  • Are filing a 2008 California personal income tax return.
  • Were a California resident all year in 2008.
  • Meet our CalFile qualifications – 6.4 million California taxpayers do.

I’ve used TurboTax to prepare my return for the last nine years because the questionnaire will often jog my memory about something I need to put into my tax return. They also now have the free It’s Deductible website where I can track and estimate the value of my charitable donations throughout the year and import into TurboTax at tax time.

TurboTax only allows you to e-file your federal return for “free,” charging $20 to e-file the state return.* So I’ve always opted to print out and submit my state return by certified mail.

Last year I came across CalFile after I’d already prepared everything for mailing. This year I decided to give it a try, using the TurboTax numbers as a basis for comparison. CalFile took less than 30 minutes (faster than a trip to the post office) and was pretty easy. I highly recommend it.

*TurboTax tried to jack up their prices and screw their customers earlier this year, as reflected in the 1-star reviews on Amazon. In response to the outrage, Intuit dropped their prices to be competitive with TaxCut and stopped trying to charge $10 for every e-filed or printed federal return. In a related bit of shadiness, Amazon allowed the earlier Turbotax reviews to get wiped clean because they were now selling a “new version” of the software.

Image CC BY StockMonkeys.com