"Good Job!", IRB

This year was my first time filing my taxes. Yes, I am now a legal tax-paying 'rakyat'. Anyway let me share my experience with the IRB here. It was an unexpectedly good one, I must admit.

I received my BE Form for year 2009 a couple of months ago in the mail. I was pretty skeptical of how the filing process would go, after hearing how tedious it was from various parties. Although I had learned how to compute personal and company tax in my ICSA taxation class, I wasn't too confident that I would be able to calculate the correct tax payable figure. So, I opted to apply for e-filing.

I followed the instructions on the BE Form to apply for an e-Pin number, e-mailing my particulars to the e-mail address printed on the paper form. Within the same day, I received an e-mail response from IRB instructing what further information they needed before they could issue me the e-Pin. FYI, they asked for my full name, MyKad number, tax account number, address, contact number and a front and back copies of MyKad.

Since I had to scan my MyKad, I could only furnish the required information a day later, which was a Friday. Then I waited, expecting them to take more than a week to reply me, since I'd submitted my request on a Friday (which is generally widely known to be a non-productive day for dealings with government offices). I waited till the whole working week was almost gone and still no e-mail in my Inbox. I was about to cuss them when I decided to sift through my Junk mail and found that the IRB had indeed replied me many days ago... and on a SUNDAY morning! Wow! That was in early March, so I don't think they had started their overtime schedule yet!

After that, it took me about a month to get my act together and try logging into my e-filing account. I was a bit blur there, as I kept clicking the B Form instead of BE Form. So I was getting frustrated for no apparent reason. After I discovered my folly, I was able to fill in the e-form with just a few tax terminology hiccups, which Google-ing helped smoothen out.

I submitted my BE e-form a few days later, slightly before the middle of April. The deadline was 30th April 2010. I was really surprised to receive a letter from IRB dated 21st April, informing me that my tax return had been processed and within 14 days, they would be sending me a cheque of the amount I had overpaid through the monthly tax deduction scheme (PCB - Pembayaran Cukai Berkala).

Less than a week later, I received the said cheque (dated 26th April, but postmarked 28th April). I was very pleasantly surprised! I never expected the IRB to be this efficient! Kudos to the IRB! Could this be the effect of the NKRA implementation? Imagine this, I received my tax refund cheque before the tax filing deadline! =)

Now I'm just awaiting a reply for the filing I did for mom. Hmm, I wonder whether she'll get a letter, since she won't be getting a tax refund...