Housing Benefit Claim Form For Hostel Residents: Fill & Download for Free

The following is a list of things you can generally do in Japan that you generally cannot in the USA:Buy a tiny little condo in Tokyo for less than US$20,000.Yes, for real, this place, located in Ōme (western Tokyo Metropolis) is only ¥1.98 million (US$18,337.92). CHEAP. Why so cheap? Because it’s only 19.11 m². That’s about 205 square feet. In my hometown in the USA, you’d never find find a place this cheap OR small. :-) In Japan, foreigners can buy both land and buildings, so all you need is the money and it’s yours…See and/or meet a gyaru (ギャル).Get a free house. There are 8 million empty homes (usually in the countryside or suburban areas, usually old) and the population is decreasing. You can have one for just the transaction costs, in some cases. These are called akiya (空き家)—warning, many of these are in rural locations and are going to need a lot of refurbishments/DIY to be livable.Buy Cuban and Iranian productsIn America, we have usually, in recent history, had embargoes on Cuban products. Now I know that this has gone back and forth recently. I’m not sure whether the embargo is still in place or not. However, my whole time in Japan, it has been possible to buy Havana Cuba Rum, Cuban cigars, etc. I can go to Roppongi to the ¥100 shop and buy Iranian figs, and for a little bit more money, Iranian pomegranate juice or Iranian dates, that say “Made in Iran” on the box.Get a mortgage loan for a home for a 1–1.5% interest rateIn America, good luck on finding any mortgage for less than 3.75%. The difference over the course of 30 years is HUGE.Be immersed in Japanese language and cultureHere, you can practice your Japanese with just about anyone. They won’t get all annoyed and be like “Dude, what’s your problem? I’m from L.A.” Usually, they’ll happily comply. Of course, on the other hand, people might automatically try to practice their English with you even though your Japanese is just fine, and then you’ll have to be like (in Japanese, of course) “Dude, what’s your problem? I’ve lived in Japan for more than 1/4 of my life. I can speak Japanese.”Buy an inflatable three-person rowboat at 3:00 in the morning at Don QuijoteDon Quijote is a hypermart like Wal-Mart or Target, but it’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have practically everything. Inflatable rowboats. Costumes of giant turds. And boob hats. Groceries and furniture, too.Become vested in the Japanese National Pension systemOkay, so you’ve worked in the USA for a gazillion years and are now vested in Social Security. Great. Now what’re you gonna do? That’s right! Move to Japan, get a blue National Pension (国民年金) book and start paying into their system for at least ten years! Then when you’re ~65, you can get payments from both countries! Who’s laughing now?!Note: Due to changes over the past few years, it seems that now, Japan and the US have a “Totalization Agreement.” This means that you probably can’t “double dip” anymore. As I understand it (thanks to Frederick Gundlach), from now on (technically from a few years ago), it now works so that rather than getting two independent pensions that don’t “see” each other, and rather than picking whichever one is more “lucrative” at retirement time, you simply receive a pension from America according to what you paid in there, and a pension from Japan according to what you paid in in Japan. The American Windfall Elimination Act prevents the two from adding up to an unfairly high sum. Therefore, you can no longer say “I will get $10,000 from Country A and $10,000 from Country B for 20 years’ work (10 in A, 10 in B), which will add up to $20,000, which is more than I would get from 20 years’ payments into just one of either Country A or B.” You also cannot “surf” the best pension. Confusing, I know.I can still see some theoretical benefits, though. I think it’s better to have your eggs in two baskets than one. If you’re a young person reading this, you could easily be alive for another 50 years. Lots can happen in that time. If something horrible ever happens to one of those two countries (complete collapse of the government→failed state, invasion, hyperinflation rendering the currency practically worthless, etc.), at least you will still get *SOMETHING* from a government somewhere.Buy nattō and tofu for really, really cheap pricesAt Don Quijote, I get tofu for less than US$0.30. Nattō (fermented soybeans in their brown, congealed glory) is less than $0.50 for three Styrofoam packs.↑NattōConsume alcohol wherever you wantThere are no open container laws. This is great for your drinking freedom. Instead of going to an expensive bar, you and your friends can go drink in the park, along the river, or in the park along the river! Of course, this is a double-edged sword because sometimes you have to deal with people who are publicly drunk.Engage in certain “night trades,” either as a customer or a worker, that I will not get into in this postDrive a vehicle with loudspeakers attached to it and blare loud music or announcements, possibly waking up everyone in the whole neighborhood, and not get in troubleWalk into a regular neighborhood thrift shop or bookstore (not a specialty shop) and buy Famicom (=original Nintendo) or original Game Boy games for ¥100 per cartridgeI’ve lived in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, in addition to Japan. Never, anywhere else in East Asia, have I ever seen such nostalgia for old video games. Which is great if you’re into that kind of thing.Eat raw eggsIn Japan, they treat the shells specially to prevent salmonella. In the USA, they don’t. Raw eggs are much safer in Japan. At first, I thought this was gross, but now, I frequently eat a raw egg on rice with my nattō.Eat whale sushi or horse meatWhale meat is illegal in most countries. Horse meat was illegal in the USA until 2011, and is still illegal in some states. In any event, it is not common. In Japan, though, you can buy horse meat in a can in almost any supermarket!Find ancient Japanese artifacts on the groundA co-worker of mine once found a Jōmon Period (>2,000-year-old) arrowhead on the ground at a baseball field. Japan has been inhabited for thousands of years. Who knows what you might find? Some people go metal detecting at the beach and find old ryō gold coins.Get as many cardboard boxes as you want for free from the supermarket.This way, they get rid of their cardboard boxes. You can save ¥2 on a plastic bag, and get a free box. Box fort, anyone?Get away with various things that would be considered “not good manners” in the USA: not making eye contact (it is rude in most of East Asia to make eye contact with a superior), not holding doors for people, slurping your food (considered polite here), etc.Get half price on lunchboxes after 7:00 PM or so, or other types of food when they are about to hit their expiration datesGo fishing in the ocean without a license, and it’s completely legal as long as it isn’t commercialGo to the hospital—to have your ears pierced!Learn karate or whatever Japanese martial art where it was actually invented, or other unique cultural things such as tea ceremonyMail a large package for just $10 or $20 at the post officeThis is so useful when you’re moving from one part of Japan to another. Just pack your whole household’s worth of stuff into ten or twenty boxes and mail them. Much cheaper than renting a U-Haul.Meet North Korean citizensThere are hundreds of thousands of North Korean citizens living in Japan. They go to special Korean schools with portraits of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un. Their families have been here for generations, perhaps, and maybe their Korean speaking skills aren’t even all that good, but they still have North Korean passports.Raise a pet chickenA chicken is considered a completely normal pet in Japan and it is not treated as a farm animal for legal purposes. Many people raise them, even in urban areas.Ride your bicycle on the sidewalk without a helmet or lights without getting in troubleOf course this is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s more freedom for you. On the other hand, you’re more likely to get hit by a maniac when you’re out walking.Return library books late and not pay a fineIf you return library books late, you won’t be able to check out books for a certain amount of time. However, you won’t be fined.Become a permanent resident of Japan or even a naturalized Japanese citizenYou can’t get any sort of long-term immigrant status in Japan if you’re sitting in the USA. You generally have to be physically present in Japan for many, many years to become a permanent resident or citizen. In my case, permanent residency will take me at least ten years. Citizenship is actually shorter—I could apply to become a Japanese national after only five years (though I wouldn’t want to—I like my American passport and feel more loyalty to America).See a North Korean ghost shipEvery year, numerous North Korean fishing boats wash up on the shores of central and northeastern Japan. The fishermen were out fishing illegally in Japan’s EEZ, and got lost. Many times, there are corpses or skeletons on board…See a tanuki (Japanese raccoon dog) or numerous other forms of wildlife such as the Japanese giant salamanderAwww… It’s a tanooki.Simply stop buying tissues or toilet paperThere are so many people standing on street corners passing out packets of tissues as advertising, I literally haven’t bought toilet paper or tissues since 2017 when I moved to Tokyo.Stay overnight at an Internet caféMany Internet cafés give you a little cubicle with four walls that may or may not reach the ceiling. You have a little door. You can ask for a pillow and a blanket and get a “Night Pack” for about US$20. This is much cheaper than staying at a hotel and more private and convenient than staying at a youth hostel. I get a pretty good night’s sleep at these places. They also have Internet cafés in the USA, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. but not with the cubicles where you can stretch out and sleep easily.Take a three-hour hot showerIn my parents’ house in America, if the shower goes too long, you run out of hot water. The same thing was true of my grandmother’s house in Ohio. The boilers are limited-capacity and don’t heat the water quickly enough to replenish it. Not so in Japan. Japanese are obsessive bathers. You can keep showering for three hours, and the superior boilers won’t run out of hot water! Whenever I’m Stateside, I have to carefully coordinate showers with other family members so we don’t run out of hot water in January.Teach English even if your English is worse than that of a typical American 12-year-old’s EnglishI won’t point fingers or name names about which country, but there’s one in particular that’s an egregious offender, sending hundreds of thousands of people here with a very tenuous grasp of English, yet who claim to be “native speakers” and are readily believed to be such by the Japanese. Anyone who teaches English here knows who I’m talking about... People from that country drive down wages for those of us who are degree-holding, certified, native-English-speaking teachers, and they also teach incorrect English vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation to the Japanese students.Use a rotary telephoneGo to any community center or culture center (many government buildings). You will likely see rotary telephones in use, even in 2019.

Tax Savings options other than Sec.80C for FY 2017-18-Allowances# Mobile/Telephone Reimbursement-If your employer offering you the mobile/telephone connection or internet connection which requires for work, then you can claim 100% of such cost. However, you have to produce the bill. Only the postpaid connections are allowed for reimbursement.# Medical Allowance-This is the allowance provided to the employee to meet the treatment cost to him or his family. The maximum limit per year is Rs.15,000. Anything more than that will be taxable income to the employee.# Leave Travel Allowance-The bills for your travel against LTA can be claimed for exemption. It is allowed to be claimed twice in a block of four years. The current block is 2014 to 2017. You can carry forward your unclaimed LTA to the next year. You can request your employer to not deduct tax on it and allow you to claim it next year.# Entertainment Allowances-You may be getting this allowance. However, the exemption is available only for Government employees. The amount of exemption is least of the following.a) Rs 5,000b) 1/5th of salary (excluding any allowance, benefits or other perquisites)c) Actual entertainment allowance received# House Rent Allowance (HRA)-This is the famous exemption which is used by many salaried individuals. However, the wrong belief is that whatever the rent they pay is actually exempted from their income. The reality is different. The amount of exemption is least of the following.a) Actual HRA Receivedb) 40% of Salary (50%, if house situated in Mumbai, Calcutta, Delhi or Madras)c) Rent paid minus 10% of salary(Salary= Basic + DA (if part of retirement benefit) + Turnover based Commission)Note :-HRA will be fully taxable if an employee who is living in his own house or if he does not pay any rent. Also, it is mandatory for employee to report PAN of the landlord to the employer if rent paid is more than Rs. 1,00,000.# Children Education Allowance-If your employer providing this allowance, then you can take exemption up to Rs.100 per month per child (maximum of up to 2 children). Therefore, monthly you can save Rs.200 from this allowance. The exemption may seem so low. But why to pay the tax?# Hostel Expenditure Allowance-If your employer providing this allowance, then you can take exemption Up to Rs. 300 per month per child up to a maximum of 2 children is exempt. Therefore, you can save around maximum of Rs.600 from this allowance.# Transport Allowance-This allowance is provided to you to meet expenditure on commuting between place of residence and place of duty. The extent of exemption is Rs.1,600 per month. For blind and handicapped employees is Rs.3,200 per month.# Conveyance Allowance-This is the different allowance than transport allowance. It is the expenditure granted to an employee to meet the expenses on conveyance in performing of his official duties. There is no limit for this. If such conveyance allowance is Rs.5,000 a month, then the whole allowance is exempt. Hence, you may this may be exempt to the extent of expenditure incurred for official purposes.# Any Allowance to meet the cost of travel on tour or on transfer-Here also no limit. The employee can claim exempt to the extent of expenditure incurred for official purposes.# Allowance to meet the cost of travel on tour or on transfer-Here also no limit. The employee can claim exempt to the extent of expenditure incurred for official purposes.# Daily Allowance-If you are not placed in normal duty place, then your employer may provide you such allowance. The employee can claim exempt to the extent of expenditure incurred for official purposes.These are the major allowances, which can be utilized to save tax on salary income. There are few other allowances also to claim the exemption. But many of such allowances are not so famous. Hence, I left them to list.Tax Savings options other than Sec.80C for FY 2017-18Above we discussed few allowances, which you can use wisely to save tax. Now let us move on and discuss more the alternatives to Tax Savings options other than Sec.80C for FY 2017-18.Note-Effective from FY 2017-18, the limit under Sec.24B for both self-occupied and let out the property (loss from house property) is set as Rs.2,00,000. Earlier there was no such limit for let out properties (for set-off of the loss when the interest payment is more than the rental income).# Sec.80CCCDeduction under Sec.80CCC is available only for individuals. Contribution to an annuity plan of the LIC of India or any other insurer for receiving the pension. Do remember that the amount should be paid or deposited out of income chargeable to tax.The maximum amount deductible under Sec.80CCC is Rs.1.5 lakh. Do remember that this is also the part of combined limit of Rs.1.5 lakh available under Sec.80C, Sec.80CCC, and Sec.80CCD(1).# Sec.80CCDThis is all about your investment in NPS. I explained the same in my earlier post “NPS Tax Benefits – Sec. 80CCD(1), 80CCD(2) and 80CCD(1B)“. But I will recap the same here as below.NPS Tax Benefits under Sec.80CCD (1)The maximum benefit available is Rs.1.5 lakh (including Sec.80C limit).An individual’s maximum 20% of annual income (Earlier it was 10% but after Budget 2017, it increased to 20%) or an employees (10% of Basic+DA) contribution will be eligible for deduction.As I said above, this section will form the part of Sec.80C limit.NPS Tax Benefits under Sec.80CCD (2)There is a misconception among many that there is no upper limit for this section. However, the limit is least of 3 conditions. 1) Amount contributed by an employer, 2) 10% of Basic+DA and 3) Gross Total Income.This is additional deduction which will not form the part of Sec.80C limit.The deduction under this section will not be eligible for self-employed.NPS Tax Benefits under Sec.80CCD (1B)This is the additional tax benefit of up to Rs.50,000 eligible for income tax deduction and was introduced in the Budger 2015Introduced in Budget 2015. One can avail the benefit of this Sect.80CCD (1B) from FY 2015-16.Both self-employed and employees are eligible for availing this deduction.This is over and above Sec.80CCD (1).Be Peaceful !!!

I call it bystanderism, somewhat akin to the bystander effect but more general. In Medieval times, sloth referred not to laziness but to the inability to look around you and recognize the wonder of God’s creation. Bystanderism is a version of sloth for modern times—the inability to look around you and see opportunity to achieve your own goals in life… and so why have goals then, right?This contagion comes from attending our public schools, from getting a “progressive education.” It’s not accidental. It is very much by design.This outlook arose in reaction against the Age of Enlightenment, especially against the emergence of free enterprise, which Karl Marx renamed capitalism. But Marx wasn’t the problem. He simply wanted the people to take over capitalism so they could prosper instead of the “idle men with idle money” Marx saw getting all the benefit.No, it was Rousseau, followed by Hegel and Hamann and Fichte who started the trend that all of the emergent positive humanism that sprang from the Enlightenment was nothing more than a trap, a ruse… a way to entice common people into thoughts of their own grandeur.The Enlightenment, you see, had all but destroyed the concept of the Elect of God, the idea that rose with Protestantism that something like ten percent of us, give or take, had long ago been pre-ordained by God to reside with Him in Heaven. The rest of us were mere brutes, lacking souls. The goal of the pious Elect was to find a way to co-exist without co-mingling. The last thing they wanted was brutes getting jazzed up about the possibility of a better life.It was Fichte—Johann Gottlieb—who set out to provide a concrete remedy. When Napoleon trounced the Prussian troops at the twin battles of Auerstadt and Jena in 1806 (if I recall correctly), the report was that the Prussian conscript troops had, in disgust at the obvious poor choices of their generals, simply laid down their arms and walked back to their farms and shops.For elites like those I named above, having commoners decide to act in their own best interest was a prescription for disaster. Already, this free-enterprise thing was making some commoners as wealthy as dukes or even princes! That had to be nipped in the bud. God Himself, after all, expected a certain order to things.So, Fichte went to work redesigning the Volksschule, the school for common people (their own sons attended the Realschule, where they learned the gentlemanly arts).By 1814, his new design had opened in Berlin. It featured such innovations asGrades—to demonstrate that your work was for the subjective, even better—arbitrary—approval of your betters and unworthy of material reward beyond thatBells—to mark class-time and prevent any concept of ownership of one’s own time from formingRows and columns of desks—to instill a sense of isolation within regimentationHomework—to demonstrate the ability of the state to intrude on one’s own timeA campus designed with nowhere to escape administrative scrutiny—so that no sense of personal privacy could developYou get the idea.The crowning stratagem, however, was a high-sounding curriculum of mindless memorization so that nothing actually useful was imparted. There was to be no teaching of any process from start to finish as that would actually confer independence from the will of the state.Fichte claimed his goal was “citizens who would not revolt, workers who would not strike, soldiers who would not disobey orders.” This achievement of robbing the masses of any sense of their own agency in this world is the reason he was widely considered on the Continent the ancestral father of Naziism.If you went to a school with those features, it’s because Horace Mann, secretary of education for Massachusetts, traveled to Berlin a couple of generations later and thought it the cure for the kind of independence being fostered in American schools. Once he had installed it in detail in his own state, he began peddling it to legislatures along the East Coast as the cure for “the immigrant problem,” a scourge widely perceived there in the Progressive Era. Another generation later, John Dewey added some Tayloristic assembly-line-method tweaks and pronounced it definitively the new American school system.The trouble is… it actually works as designed. It’s designed to produce sheep, flocks that will give no trouble to the shepherd class. (That’s why my wife and I sent our sons to a school designed on the principles of the earlier American Common School—the old “little red schoolhouse”—that fostered American independence and can-do spirit rather than bystanderism).When I was in book publishing, bystanderism was not much in evidence. Those jobs were hard to come by, and people worked hard to show they deserved them. It was after I bought into a retail enterprise that it became a constant in my life. All of the sales clerks my partner or I hired were not just high school grads but college grads, and they were inert, living lives of no direction while constantly grousing about the lack of opportunity in their life.I was crackerjack at the advertising end of the business, even teaching night courses to Silicon Valley professionals. I would have welcomed an assistant to teach the skill to. No one ever showed interest. My partner was God’s gift to merchandising. He would have been happy to take someone under his wing… no. We finally settled on if they showed up on time and could talk to the customers, they’d earned their $7 an hour (that would equate to $17.50 these days).There were only two exceptions. Missy was a high school intern for us who went to a Jewish school. We lost her to college, but in four years she was back wanting a job. Can’t believe I did it… I asked her why in the world would someone with as much on the ball as she had want to come back to work with us!!She said, “You guys are the greatest. I see huge opportunity here.” We let her coordinate our Bay Area stores starting at $45,000/year (comfortably into six-figures in today’s money). She was no bystander.We were having a big sale in our Berkeley store one day when in walks a young Australian who asks me, “Hey, mate, do you suppose I could work for you for the rest of the day and make $38.50?”“Why $38.50?”“Tha’s what I owe to clear out of my hostel. I’m bopping m’ way around the world.”“Sure.”Graeme was golden. All energy. We ended up shortly putting him in day-to-day charge of our big LA operation. That netted him a salary of $90,000 a year, plus he was in charge of the 5-bedroom house we leased near the beach in Santa Monica—free room and board. That was actually more than we were paying ourselves, but it was a highly accountable job. That money—about a quarter of a million a year today—jetted him around the world. He was in Norway next. Last I saw on FB, he was living, 35 years later, near Lake Como in Italy. There wasn’t a drop of bystander in his makeup.If you went to a progressive school, public or often even private. You may well have developed a case of bystanderism. You will not like capitalism. That’s how the clever take advantage of you, as you see it. But you will trust the shepherds. They’ve been billed to you all along as your salvation, your protection against the greed-heads out to use you. They will forgive your student loans… one day. They will pass a higher-minimum-wage bill… which will likely cost you employment, but you see it as them having your back.But they will never be inviting you over to enjoy twelve-dollar-a-pint ice cream from their $24,000 freezers. They’ve worked hard to create a very different reality in which you get to live your life.By the way, after World War II, the Germans at least had the good sense to overhaul their Volkschule system to be much more humanistic.