I don't think there's one single picture of me taking care of our KVITS. No evidence of the discontent I felt as I sat in front of piles and piles of receipts every quarter. But I did take a picture of Rhea as she sat at the dining room table imitating me and the KVITS process. If only I could have had her handle the real thing!
Latvia charges a crazy 21% sales tax on purchases. Diplomats are exempt from paying those taxes to the Latvian government, but instead of deducting the tax right away at the cash register, diplomats have to save their receipts and get their names somehow typed onto the receipt (usually by communicating with a cashier that doesn't understand English). If you don't get your name on the receipt, then you have to get the receipts stamped by the store or restaurant to show authenticity and have them fill and sign a little KVITS paper that shows what you bought and when. Then you have to fill out paperwork with the receipts listed and calculate everything to show the total tax that we paid and what should be refunded to us.
After just a few months, we realized that we could save A LOT of time by not going through this process every time we made a purchase (unless it was at a store or restaurant we weren't sure we would return to), and that we could just collect a bunch of receipts for each store and go back to the store and get them all signed and stamped in one trip. The hardest part about this process was working hard NOT to lose the receipts, but also to get a cashier or store employee to help you when you went back to the store to help you with the KVITS. Most of them didn't speak English, and with the lack of customer service education, they never responded well to my requests for them to take the time to sign and stamp my papers. By the end of our two years there, I had it down pretty good and knew who to talk to. I even got to the point where they would let ME have the stamp to stamp the receipts myself so they could continue to help other customers and all they had to do was sign my KVITS form.
Here's one illustration though on how it didn't always work out. This receipt from Senukai was only worth $2.50 or so, but because all of those little amounts add up to hundreds of dollars, I followed through with trying to get a KVITS signed. For some reason, this particular store would NOT give me a KVITS with their signature. They stamped it I guess because they didn't understand what I needed, but then when I asked them to sign the KVITS, they backed off and said they couldn't do it. Some stores and restaurants collect taxes from you but never actually pay them to the Latvian government. Not sure if this was the case with this store, but luckily this was one of the few purchases I made there. Just from one normal grocery shopping trip at Rimi or Maxima, we would pay $18-20 in taxes, so those were the most important to collect on.
Let's just say that it was not my favorite activity to do in Latvia. But we literally saved thousands of dollars over the two years there, so it was an absolute necessity despite the headaches!
0 comments: