It's difficult to fully explain all of the complicated and multi-layered in's and out's of what has officially turned into a fiasco. We often have family, friends, and supporters ask about the status, so here is an attempt at explaining what has recently happened.
*The van arrived in Chile one year ago this month. If you remember, we shipped the van to Chile earlier than our expected arrival to insure that it would be released by the time we arrived in Jan. 09. (insert rye smile here)
*The issue these past months has NOT been with customs, but with the equivalent of the IRS department here in Chile. They are saying that our mission GMSA (or MESA as it’s called here in Chile) doesn’t have the correct paperwork for tax exempt status. Of course, this is not true. Our mission has had this status for years and has been able to bring in used vehicles without problems for years. But apparently, are mission is missing paperwork that proves that the van will be used with the handicapped. We believe that this issue is partly because of a new Chilean law that makes it harder for organizations to bring vehicles in, and partly due to Catholic discrimination against Evangelicals (non-Catholics).
*So, after numerous attempts to gain approval of the paperwork under our mission’s name over the past 10 months, it was best thought to attempt to bring it into Chile under the name of our national church association called UCB. UCB has all the paperwork in order that pertains to the handicapped issue and has recently brought in several vehicles for the ministry by nationals.
*So then we needed to make a letter of donation from MESA to UCB. This entailed a bunch of paperwork, signatures, and time in the mail. As part of this process, the vehicle needed to be driven back to the port (from free storage at our camp) to officially “take it out of the country” (kind of like no-man’s land). This is where our vehicle is currently located.
*We submitted a request to have the van stored again at our camp (see picture to the right), just south of Santiago, as we wait for the UCB paperwork process to go through. This request has recently been denied. Their reason given was that items can be stored “off site” only once. This means that now we have to pay daily storage at the port for the duration of the UCB paperwork process. We are currently waiting to her back from our field director as to the amount of this daily storage charge.
That’s the l - o - n - g and short of it.
It’s been an interesting, confusing, frustrating, expensive, but faith-growing year. We are thankful that we don’t have to deal with this personally, since we live so far from Santiago. Our field director has been handling the situation with all of the port agents, lawyers, and govt. officials. This includes trips to the port, interviews, paperwork, phone calls, and emails.
If…and it’s a big if…if the “IRS” office approves the UCB paperwork, we could have our vehicle out in a matter of 60 days (a normal span for vehicle release). But who knows...Chile is famous for it's red tape.
We would continue to ask that you keep this situation in your prayers.
To be continued...
1 comment:
AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
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