Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

Ripped off by the government. Marlo got a tax return of several hundred dollars last year, but recently she got a letter from the government saying there was a mistake, and she owes them $400. My story is weak by comparison, but it still riles me.

I bought a pair of converse on ebay. I got them for $15.75 US plus postage for a total of about 21 American bucks. Cons go for about $60 Canadian in stores, so after you convert US$21 to Cdn$25, that’s a pretty good deal. But the other day I got a note from the post office saying there was a package with $17.60 due on it. I knew it was the shoes. I went to the post office to find out what the deal was. The guy who sent it wrote $15 for the value on the customs declaration form, but his one looks like a seven, so they charged me $12.60 in tax on what they thought was an item valued at $75 US ($90 Canadian) plus the standard $5 “handling fee.” Naturally the lady at the 7-11 postal outlet can’t do anything, but she told me about all the bureaucratic hoops I have to jump through to get my $17 back (and the handling fee is probably exempt). So I filled out the form, included a copy of the invoice from ebay, and even scanned in the package and printed out the scan so they could see buddy boy’s writing. I know it’s only $17 bucks, but it kind of defeats the purpose of searching for a good deal, plus I hate what it was “spent” on. Spending $17 on a friend or myself – great. Giving it to a government that already charges me for services that I rarely or cannot use – crap.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2005 at 12:12 pm and is filed under General. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.