Pension fund and income tax

When I stopped working, my pension fund was freed by the company I worked for and became my property. This is considered a tax event (iru’a mas) because I was not employed by another company after that. The form stated that I owed taxes on a certain portion of the pension, so it was explained to me that I needed to get the income tax office to sign the form that I was not taking the pension out, but leaving it to mature.

I went into the tax office with the form and my last three pay slips. I expected to see a clerk and took with me something to read while in the queue. I went to the information desk on the ground floor and asked where the tax office information was. The website had said that it was on level 0. She told me to go up two floors and it was on the left, and when I queried the level 0 bit, she said, yes that was level 0 - weird.

Anyway, I found the desk in question and the nice lady took the form and told me that she would pass it on the correct office. She gave me a phone number in case I didn’t hear back from them within one week. This is surprising on two levels, first that she volunteered such useful information, and second that she expected me to receive the signed form within a week. Not only that, a real tax officer phoned me a couple of hours later to confirm the details.

And that was that, I got home 75 minutes after I left it and was in time for breakfast.

Update: I received the signed form today – 2 working days after I handed it in!!!

On a less positive aspect, there was a newspaper article today mentioning that some pension funds had actuarial problems and would need to reduce the monthly pension. My pension fund was listed (with a deficit of 9.3%), and I have only just over one year before it matures (at the previous female retirement age). Now I have to go check this out.