Along the way this week one of the secretaries was quite insistent that I check my mailbox. I give the same attitude towards my real mail that I give my e-mail, which is that if I respond to it too often people will just start mailing me more, so I accidentally agitated her by taking care of some other chores before picking it up.
The mail, it turned out, was from the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, the income tax people. They finally took my tax information -- which they received, electronically, in mid-February, and got paperwork confirming that was right in mid-April -- and calculated my income tax for 2004. I notice this is about how long it took them to calculate my tax bill for last year, when I assumed the electronic notice from my employers was enough and I was therefore about three months tardy with my paperwork. I guess this is just the time of year they figure out people around my employment pass number.
And no, waiting to get the letter, much less open it, won't affect me much; I've got about a month to pay the bill, and there's a notice if I wish to contest it any. My tax comes to a bit over half a month's pay, which is a touch more than I paid for 2003 taxes; that's only fair, since I worked a touch longer in 2004 than in 2003. I only idly wonder if the electronic payment stations -- like I use for the phone and cable bills -- will accept my payment in one card swipe, since I believe the amount is bigger than the maximum daily withdrawal I have on my bank card, but we'll see. (I don't remember the maximum daily withdrawal offhand.) They include forms for auto-deducted, and monthly, payment for 2005's tax, which I probably won't do, because the forms make me vaguely uneasy.
Trivia: New Orleans used 375 tons of ice in 1827. Source: Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman.
Currently Reading: Interstellar Empire, John Brunner.