I AM a banker and if I don't provide timely and quality services to my customers, I'll lose the business. However, it would appear that if the civil servants goof, they always have the discretion of imposing a penalty surcharge on the taxpayers.
On April 27, I mailed my rates payments (No 1441215983131Y and 1441209864871Q) to the Director of Accounting Services, P.O. Box 8000. These were due on April 30.
On May 19, I received the receipts, with the remarks ''Part Settlement - Omission of Surcharge.'' The imprinted receipt date was May 11. The postmark date was May 17. In other words, it took two days for mailing transit but it took six days for the Treasury (or the Director of Accounting Services' Office?) to return the receipts which is a simple process of using window envelopes.
If it took two days for mailing transit for the return of receipts, I would readily assume that it should not take more than two days for my payments to reach the P.O. Box address. Why did it take until May 11 for the payments to be processed? There was no delay on my part in sending in the payments, unless it was the case of more time needed for a letter to arrive at a Post Office address than a street address.
I believe the late payments were the result of the inefficient process within the system (that is, the Post Office or the Director of Accounting Services' Office or the Treasury). Why should taxpayers be penalised because of government inefficiencies? FREDERICK IP Tai Hang
