Project Team & PPS

May 8 - Day 27
Our project team of 4 is now fully staffed. We are very excited to welcome our newest person, a girl from Malaysia. She is a "part-qualified" accountant. I'm not quite sure how to translate this into US terms. I know that the accounting exams over here are 3 years long and a part-qualified means that they have passed some but not all exams, or that they have passed all of the exams and have not fulfilled the experience requirements to get qualified accountant status. We are excited to have one more person to share the workload!

May 9 - Day 28
I set out to find the PPS office first thing in the morning. The PPS is the equivalent of a social security number in the states. It is used to track your taxes and such. And you have to have a utility bill to prove your address. However, my landlord has been requesting my PPS number so that he can "register my tenancy". It's like the chicken and egg thing. You can't register where you live without a PPS number and you can't get a PPS number until you have a place to live and a valid utility bill. My understanding is that when he registers me, I will have to pay a tax on my rent. Kinda crazy to me, but according to the people at work the landlord can be held liable for the tax on my rent if he does not appropriately register me. Once I am registered, then I have to pay the tax. I successfully applied for a PPS number based on an opening statement from the electric company. Now, I just have to wait approximately 2 weeks for them to mail me a PPS number. That was the last of the 3 major items to get in Ireland. YEAH! I'm still working on the Irish bank account to get the ATM and online functions to work, but I am making progress. A girl that I work closely with, is an Irish native, but she spent time working in the states. She says that some of the same challenges that I face here, non-US natives face in the US. She talked about spending 4 hours in a social security office in San Jose, CA trying to get a SSN. I guess my 1 1/2 hours in Ireland sure beats that!