Finiquito

At the end of the project you are required to make application to terminate the project. Some say that if you leave the project unfinished for 5 years it falls off the radar but I do not know this. Your accountant will want you to do the finiquito because he charges another 3,000 pesos for that. The process basically revolves around the IMSS folks making sure that you paid enough IMSS for the work that got done so it makes no sense to cheat. It will be obvious if you constructed a 200 square meter home with only 3 people working for 4 weeks. The finiquito can take up to a year to accomplish. I still haven’t finished my project after 2 years so I don’t have first hand experience. My accountant explain to me that any penalties will be assessed as of the time they were incurred and because of that the penalties plus interest can add up to a lot. But if you didn’t cheat there should be no penalties.

Update Feb 2010 : I am still working at small parts of the project and will probably be doing so for a long time. I could probably apply for my finiquito now but I have no plans to do so. In a couple of years I will be able to tell you what happens if you don’t apply.

Another personal story:

Two days ago an official from IMSS came by our place early, before our caretaker had even gotten dressed and had a cup of coffee. She mentioned that to me to let me know that she is not USUALLY so easily duped and wanted me to understand that she didn’t have time to get her wits about her….Anywho, this guy told her that we had not filed our finiquito on the sea wall and owed 11,000 pesos, and further, if we didn’t pay it ASAP it would accrue penalties and the total would be over 30,000 pesos.

She told him to come back later in the day and she would go to the bank and get the money. She called me and I told her to call our accountant immediately as it was her job to make sure all fees were paid. The accountant said that we should not be in risk of penalties yet and immediately got on the Internet to find that our finiquito was actually 2500 pesos, a whopping 8500 pesos less than this guy was asking for. While it is not certain that this guy was making a little profit on his trip to our house it is certainly suspect. Like most things, we may find out that there are other fees, fines or payoffs to make, but at this time it sure seems like the guy was trying to make a little money for his holiday.

When the guy came back that evening, late, our caretaker told him that our accountant had gotten on the Internet and taken the disk to the bank and paid the fees and that they were only 2500 pesos! He told her that if we had overpaid him we could have gone to Mezcales and gotten the overpayment back. I wonder how many people fall for this. With the threat of additional charges I can imagine that most people would quickly pay him rather than risk the penalties. When he came to the door he asked for me as my name is on the contract with IMSS, so perhaps he was just banking on my being a gringa and stupid…..I know if she had paid him we would have never gone to check out the real balance due in Mezcales. Do you think that they would have sent him back with the overpayment….I think not.

Moral of the story, NEVER pay anyone who shows up at your door collecting fees. The extra time it takes to investigate and make the payment at the proper place might save you a lot of money.