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Showing posts from February 9, 2011

Hidden riches, jeunes riches 錢財不露眼‧少年英財

It’s not wise to judge a book by its cover, and to judge how wealthy a person is from their appearance is even more hit and miss. There are plenty of them floating around us any time, and the Frankfurt Airport and Munich are a couple of places where they are more easily spotted. At the Frankfurt Airport it took me 20 minutes to receive my 13 euro tourist tax refund. The culprit was a very slow-moving queue of people who would submit multiple receipts with forms that were filled incorrectly or incompletely, including a Russian man who submitted almost 20 receipts. Then there was a Chinese woman who asked me for help with translation. I told her that the staff could pay her refund only in US dollars but not euros, and charge-back to her credit card was not allowed since the amount was a stunning 3000 euros! Based on the general 20 % sales tax rate across Europe and tax refund would usually give back only 70 % of the tax, I estimated that the woman would have purchased at least 20000 euro