January 3, 2013- Paying our Property Taxes

On January 3^rdwe had planned to meet our friend Eddie at the municipal building in Salinas in order to pay our 2013 property taxes. We decided to pay them as early as we could because our lawyer Sebastian had emailed us that the Government office doing our Residency Visa now wanted our 2013 receipt.

It seems that last year’s tax receipt, which they already had, did not have our name on it. Ok, no problem! Eddie was going with us to do our Spanish translation as I thought  we may have a problem. Bureaucracy is next to godliness in Ecuadorian government!

Because everyone who paid their property taxes during the first 15 days of January received a 10% discount (discounts went down in a sliding scale as the weeks/months progressed) the line-up at the caja was huge. When it was finally our turn, Eddie asked the woman employee to check that our names were on the property record on her computer. Indeed Uwe’s was but not mine!!! We had our deed/registration papers with both names but she couldn’t change and she sent us to yet another line-up.

When again it was our turn, the gentleman employee said yes, our registration papers looked fine but he could not change the computer, we would have to talk to the manager. Into the back office we went to yet another line-up- patience… patience….

This time there were only 2 people ahead of us. The manager checked our papers and yes, everything looked good, he would talk to both employees we had talked to already.

When he returned after talking to the first person we had lined up at he told us that she had made an error- both our names were indeed on the property record in the computer- she just hadn’t scrolled down far enough.

Back to the first line-up which by now was at least 3 times as long. Patience… patience..

Eddie being even more impatient than me went back in the manager’s office and convinced him to let us get back in the front of this very long line.

Finally finally we paid our $218.45 yearly property tax for our 2100 Sq Ft condo, got our receipts with BOTH our names on it and were on our way. Patience… patience… LOL

What would we ever do without our amigo Eddie! Our obvious new year’s resolution is to LEARN SPANISH so that we could become more independent.

 

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