Japanese retirees have mistakenly received checks from the US tax authorities. Value: $ 1,400, or around € 1,200, according to the British daily The Financial Times. Explanations.
It’s an unexpected thirteenth month! According to the British business daily The Financial Times , Japanese retirees living in the archipelago recently received, ” by mistake “, a “Covid check” with a face value of « 1 400 dollars » or around € 1,200. They were sent by the US tax authorities!
Stemming from the $ 1.9 trillion stimulus package put in place last March by the administration of current US President Joe Biden, these checks are supposed to be sent only to US citizens or residents. foreigners living in the United States.
Recipient error
But in fact, thousands of checks have been sent to Japanese retirees living in Japan! The US administration has not commented on this fiscal generosity.
According to the Japanese press, the checks were sent on the basis of pensions paid by the American tax authorities to certain Japanese workers, under a social security agreement between Japan and the United States, which entered into force in October 2005. .
Thus, among the retirees who received money in 2021, many worked in the United States during their careers before returning to the country. This is the case, for example, of a 79-year-old retired couple from Kanagawa prefecture.
“More than 100 countries” concerned?
The latter worked for several years on American soil for a Japanese company in the 1980s. “The United States has so much money to spend that they give it to foreigners like me who lived there about 40 years ago”, he jokes in the columns of the local daily Asahi Shimbun, taken up by the website Vice .
After having recognized this beautiful blunder, the tax services of the country of Uncle Sam asked the recipients who received these checks wrongly not to cash them, to write the words “null” on the back of them, and to send them back to the United States.
However, the problem does not only affect Japan, since checks were sent by mistake in “More than 100 countries”, explains Enda Kelleher, vice-president of the American cabinet Sprintax & Transfermate, to the Japanese newspaper Nikkei Asia .
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