Performance review, income tax and a worth-while venture

Kind of a hectic week this week.

I had to make sure that I complete the yearly performance review for my staff so that they would get considered for a pay increment this year. It is usually around this time I find myself thinking if I am actually doing good work being their boss. I like to think that I have an open door and hands off policy when it comes to my subordinate but some times I wonder if there is something that I could have done better to improve. In my performance appraisal sessions, my boss always suggested that I be more involved with what my staff were doing. “Be more involve” is his code word for micro-managing the daily lives of your staff which I could never agree to. As long as my staff completes the task/project given and keeps me appraised of any issues that comes up then I am happy with them.

I’ve submitted their performance review forms to the next level. Hopefully they would be agree with it and not ask me to go through any additional paperwork on it till the next review cycle.

I’ve also submitted my 2006 income tax form by using their online E-Hasil submission for the first time. I have to say that I found the whole process from start to finish to be fairly painless compared to the old method of filling up the manual form. It used to be that I would have to wait to get my income tax forms in the mail (which always came very late), fill the form up and send it in by hand to the Inland Revenue Board (because my frelling income tax form would always arrive in my mailbox 2 days before the submission deadline). Fed up with the last minute rush crowd at the IRB office year after year, I decided to make use of their online submission process that they started this year.

To submit the income tax form online, I had to first get a digital signature registration slip from the IRB office and download the digital signature certificate to my machine. Once I have that then I had to download a PDF version of the BE income tax form and fill up the information they required. One good thing about this online form is that I just need to plug in the numbers from my EA form as well as from my deductible receipts and the form will calculate how much I still owe the government in taxes. The form also considerately grayed out all the spouse info, child-care deductions and joint declaration section once I selected the appropriate marital status option. Once completed, I only had to click on the submit button in the document to digitally sign the completed form and submit it to their servers. They also provided a nice acknowledgement of submission acceptance screen for me to print out and keep as proof that I’ve submitted my income tax returns for 2006.

It was that easy. If only it was as easy to get more tax deductible entries to add to my annual income tax returns.


Speaking of tax deductible ventures, I like to take this opportunity to promote an online charity event organized by a few local bloggers that was highlighted in the latest entry at SultanMuzzaffar’s blog. The “Pledge Your Donation” event is coordinated by Badrul Hashim who writes the BadrulAfterSix blog and would like to collect pledges from the online community for support of the Baitul Fitrah Charity Home in Rawang. The Baitul Fitrah Home helps out young orphans and single parents in nearby areas but is currently finding it difficult to do so with their current resource limitation. They would warmly welcome any help that we could offer both in terms of financial pledges or items that they sorely need for their daily operations.

Drop the organizers a line at Badrul_hashim@astro.com.my if you think that you would like to chip in and help them out.