One could interpret it as an act of generosity. Mr. Li, our driver, had spent the morning showing us around Yan’an, in northern Shaanxi province, kindly taking us from one cave home to another as I did reporting for an article on the 20 million Chinese who still live in cave dwellings.
As I asked for a receipt for the half-day’s work, he first asked if I would accept receipts that were from a long-distance bus company.
Fine, I said, accustomed to accepting whatever kind of receipt offered to me. He handed me a fistful, saying, “I’ll give you about 400 yuan worth. You can then turn in the receipts to your company and collect extra!”
He said this with good humor, with a knowing wink that suggested this would be especially useful to me. I was only giving him 150 yuan for his services. “I know that you can’t collect for everything you spend, so sometimes you have to collect extra for other things,” he said, letting out a small chuckle.
This is a common occurrence in China. Taxi drivers and others hand over a pile of receipts, often with little correlation to the amount spent or even to the type of transaction undertaken. In fact, buying and selling receipts is a business in China. At some subway stations in Beijing, vendors sell used receipts to people for submitting on expenses or cheating tax authorities.
As a foreigner accustomed to straight dealing on expenses, this is one of the curiosities of China that is impossible to combat. If one seeks legitimate receipts for everything, one is stymied repeatedly. As readers of this blog know, I have encountered taxi cabs at certain airports around the country that refuse to give me a lift if I insist on using the meter. Instead, they set their own fee, coughing up all manner of bizarre receipts to cover the need for receipts by traveling business people.
It is pervasive petty corruption. But at times it also seems like an act of rebellion by ordinary people. China’s government can be arbitrary and capricious, and so can Chinese companies when it comes to expenses incurred by employees. Better to be prepared with a stack of possible receipts to turn in then get stuck for legitimate expenses that one can’t be turned in.
So I grabbed Mr. Li’s phony long-distance bus receipts, scrawled “150 yuan” on them as a reminder, and sped away comfortable that I had some sort of proof of an expense incurred.
I love turning those into my administrator and watching him scratch his head after my trips to China. Are you including the area between Zhengzhou and Louyang in the Henan Province of cave dwellings? I have to say that I was shocked when I saw those communities for the first time.
Posted by: JC | December 09, 2008 at 12:17 PM
The Chinese are not unique in their propensity to cheat the government or their employers when the honor system is in effect.
I wonder how many people in the US who buy used vehicles in a private party transaction actually fill in the full amount of the transaction when they transfer the title? (Note: the self-reported amount of the transaction is subject to a vehicle transfer tax, hence the incentive to report a very low amount.)
Few people in any country have enough honor to be truthful when the government's back is turned.
Posted by: Realist | December 09, 2008 at 03:08 PM
Um - I'll take the balance of those receipts (RMB 250 by my calculation) off of your hands for RMB 5. I'll wait for you at the Guo Mao subway entrance.
Posted by: laoban | December 09, 2008 at 08:02 PM
Fair enough but I am often given blank taxi receipts by London cabbies and then fill them in later with several times the amount to save a bit of tax. (If the Inland Revenue is reading this I don't actually do this, the above is just poetic license).
The thing in China is that the system is so difficult to keep up with and there are so many things that you can and can't claim it always pays to have a little extra knocking around to fill in the blanks.
I know that my staff over-claim at times but that is just life. Better to give your staff a budget or have them submit an expense plan in advance to stop them taking the mickey.
Posted by: Chris Stevens | December 09, 2008 at 09:14 PM
In America it's not that much different. I was in D.C. and the taxi driver gave me a blank receipt that I filled in myself. Of course I myself did not cheat the system, I've known people who have.
Also, I've seen people buy transit cards and in turn sell to others and take the receipt and claim it on their travel expenses. As the reader "Realist" said, the Chinese aren't the only ones.
I think the mainland should learn something from Taiwan and start having a national lottery attached to each receipt. This way, people won't throw away their receipts and actually start demanding receipts. It's a great idea.
This only goes to show, cheating the government is present in ALL forms of government...
Posted by: Junhui | December 10, 2008 at 03:12 AM
I just returned from Mexico. It was impossible to get daily receipts for the cabs taken each day from the approved Wal-Mart Azcopotzalco taxi stand. The guy in "control" of the taxi site sold the receipts. He offered to sell us a book for the equivalent of $20. We declined. Luckily I don't need receipts for anything under $25, and rides usually cost no more then $8. Happy travels.
Posted by: Juan Valdez | December 10, 2008 at 03:58 AM
On my daily walking commute from my office in Guo Mao, I was amused to see a guy holding a giant stack of sticky labels bending over every 15 feet or so and sticking them to the sidewalk. Somebody must be pretty sensitive about advertisements for phony chops & receipts... the next morning, each label had been painstakingly scraped clean, and in many cases, painted over with gray paint to make them unreadable!
Posted by: christopher mills | December 10, 2008 at 07:51 PM