Sad but true, my husband thinks accountants create an entertainment vacuum. But, if I died, he says he's going to attend such a conference to find a new wife to take over my practice.
How to walk in someone else's shoes... without wallowing in their shoe box
Ring...another phone call with the same story as the last one...these boomers are all being sandwiched between parents, friends with no kids, and their own kids...
... “you have to help me. My friend in the condo complex, has dementia. I am Diane’s Power of Attorney. Canada Revenue Agency just called and they are demanding that I arrange to pay my her tax bill. She doesn’t make that much income, how could she owe? Why did they call me? “
We learn Diane decided she couldn’t cope with the collections caller. She told CRA her friend would deal with it. Power of Attorney exists, once she loses competence it would mean a trip to court to obtain the right to act on her behalf. Expensive and risky, someone else less reputable than you could win the right to represent Diane.
Diane’s tax preparer only reported T-slips were presented. Diane apparently never produced all of her T4-RIF slips, medical expenses, donation receipts....There was no attempt to compare income reported against prior years; no reporting of a foreign pension, no questions, and no returns filed for 2008 or 2009, T4’s for caregiver not correct. This is early 2010.
The penalty? 20% of income not reported for three years in a row. Not a tax on income, but a penalty on income not reported has been assessed, in this case almost $10,000. This is in spite of tax credits that bring taxable income to nil, even with unreported income. We will look at fairness when the re-assessments arrive in mid 2011.
All of the financial documents and tax returns back to the early 1990’s must be obtained for all accounts with financial institutions and mutual fund companies. Diane’s financial consultant/broker kept changing firms, and every change, new accounts and underlying that, new mutual fund accounts for every single mutual fund. Paper is almost non-existent, but T-slips tell enough of the story to get us started. Little do we know there will be over 50 accounts to account for.
This documentation is required to piece together the Adjusted Cost Base (ACB) of the investment holdings and to ensure that Diane’s holdings are identified and protected. That is, after all the responsibility of the Power of Attorney, to act for that person within the bounds of the law, whether or not that person respected the law. ACB is required to calculate the gain or loss. At date of death, there is a deemed disposition of everything mom owns.
1995 to 1999 tax returns are never found. The tax services office no longer stores those years. Why would this matter? The capital gains election in 1994 was for a pool to use against mutual funds capital gains, both from T-slips and from sales proceeds. If those mutual funds were still held in 2004, you could add any remaining pool to the ACB of the holdings.
Each year mutual fund earnings reported on the T3 slip would may include a portion of the income as capital gains. We could not ascertain if those capital gains allocations had been reduced by a claim against the 1994 election pool or not. As a result, can’t add back the unused pool from 1994 in 2004. We don’t know how much to add back, if anything.
10 months later, we have sufficient information necessary to file returns for the previous three years, and adjustments for six years prior to that on a voluntary disclosure, submitting the extra $5,000 for unpaid taxes. We added RRIF and investment income, deducted expenses, amended tax credits, reported caregiver income and benefits for room and board on T4’s.
Who are you likely to be financially responsible for? Your parents, a sister, a neighbour, friend or child? What would you do if this was you making the call?
1.Would you ignore tax returns and T4’s filed incorrectly, and investment losses?
2.Would you wait until Diane dies to deal with her affairs, accepting what’s in her portfolio, maintaining status quo? Is there an emotional attachment to Diane’s investment choices expressed by beneficiaries? Would you move to protect Diane’s assets from deteriorating in value? Would you work to simplify active accounts, amalgamating & closing accounts, shop for interest rates?
3.How would you know if the investments were generating or ever had generated income? Would you organize the documents and do analysis of the accounts and tax returns? How would you know the terms, when for example, GIC’s would be maturing? What if you weren’t getting statements of account because they had asked for them to stop?
4.How on earth would you tackle such a project?
This book, with all it’s checklists, is my answer to how to take over their financial affairs. You never really know someone until you walk in their shoes. This books is about how to walk in someone else’s shoes. Sometimes it's not a bad idea to start practicing now; and when the time comes, you will be prepared to take that walk.
Dementia / Memory Plus
This is interesting... I think I'm starting my memory book now... when you don't have kids there's no one to do this for you
PDF eBooks.. in color, with tables & the free Kobo Reader APP
This long weekend I investigated several modes of publishing eBooks that are PDF's. I was sorely disappointed when Kindle completely mashed my PDF, removing all semblance of order, color, design, charts, tables et al from my eBook.
Somewhere along the way I ran across the free Kobo eReader and downloaded it for free on both my desktop and my iPhone 3GS. I already had DropBox installed on both my desktop and my iPhone. The PDF eBook was in a DropBox folder.
When the KOBO support team found this solution for me, I had the PDF in Kobo in color, perfectly sync'd on my iPhone in under one minute.
Here are their word for word instructions for using either iTunes or Drop Box to load your eBook to a free Kobo eReader with potential!
Why would you want to do this? The library function in Kobo provides you with a way to organize your reading to find what you were last reading, or add folders for your own categories.
Now I just have to figure out how to fix the naming on the PDF as it's called Slide 1 instead of the file name.
Thank you Kobo Team. Please follow these steps in order to side-load PDF and unencrypted epub files into the
Kobo application using iTunes:
1) Check to make sure that you have version 3.4 or later of the Kobo application installed on your device and that your device is running an iOS version that supports side-loading (iPhones / iPods that can run iOS 4.0 or later, and all iPads, regardless of the iOS)
2) Launch iTunes
3) Connect your device to iTunes
4) Select the device from the Devices list in iTunes
5) Click on the "Apps" tab for the selected device
6) Scroll to the bottom of the Apps page, you should see a "File Sharing" section
7) Click On the Kobo icon that is displayed in the File Sharing section
8) Drag and drop PDF and/or unencrypted epub files into the Kobo Documents section, or use the "Add..." button to add the files.
9) iTunes should automatically sync the files to the Device
10) Launch the Kobo application and you should see the files you added via iTunes are now visible!
Sincerely,
The Kobo Team
Kobo APP Via Dropbox APP (or desktop)
Install version 3.4 or later of the Kobo application on your iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad.
1) Install Dropbox on your computer and your iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad
2) Add an unencrypted PDF or ePub file to the Dropbox folder on your computer
3) Launch the Dropbox application on your iPhone / iPod touch / iPad
4) You will see the contents of your Dropbox folder and the ePub and PDF file(s) you added will be displayed
5) Tap on the ePub or PDF file. Note: For PDF's Dropbox will actually display the content, for ePubs it won't.
6) In the top right corner of the menu is the "Open In..." icon (It's a square with a right facing arrow coming out of it), tap on this icon. It will display a list of applications that are installed which are able to open this file, one of which will be the Kobo app, tap on the entry in the list for Kobo.
The Kobo application will then launch and the file will be added to your Library / I'm Reading list.
If you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
The Kobo Team
BC can't lower the HST rate until 13 months from now... we're locked in
HST termination details
See attached a copy of the CITCA (HST) agreement between Canada and British Columbia.
· Every five years, the HST will be reviewed by both governments. (III, 14).
· After two years from the date of implementation, the Province may modify its 7% portion of the tax (IV, 16)
Annex C (p. 45) refers specifically to transitional funding, a “material breach”, and the “Day of Indemnity” repayment that would result from it.
Annex C, Section 10:
A Party will, prior to giving written notice to the other Party that the Party considers theother Party to have committed a material breach of the Agreement, consult with the other Party
in respect of the material breach and, during that consultation, discuss the circumstance or
action that, in the Party’s opinion, constitutes the material breach by the other Party.
Annex C, Section 14:
If, within 180 days of Canada’s provision of an Effective Notice in respect of a material
breach, the material breach has not been remedied or cured, the Province will indemnify
Canada in an amount equal to the portion of the Assistance Amount (referred to as the
“Indemnity”) that the Province received under the Agreement. The Parties agree that, on the day
(referred to as the “Day of Indemnity”) that is 180 days after Canada’s provision of the Effective
Notice, the Indemnity will become immediately due and payable by the Province as a debt due
to Canada. The Parties acknowledge that the Indemnity provided for under this clause is to
compensate Canada for its loss and the impact on national economic growth and job creation.
Read more attached...
Canada Post spam: you don't have mail...
Today I received an email that told me I wasn't home at 9:46 am to receive a parcel. It was so convincing, that I clicked on the print this receipt to take to collect your parcel. This was inspite of the fact that I was indeed home at that time, and would have heard the door because the dog would have barked.
Both Malwarebytes and my firewall, responded immediatley, but I still got the .exe file. Malwarebytes kept coming up telling me it was trying to activate this .exe. I called my computer guy, he told me how to do a system restore and I'm in the midst of scanning everything to make sure it's gone with both software.
Don't be fooled.. Apparently Canada Post has been receiving a steady stream of phone calls on this scam today.
Postscript: sorry couldn't post your response anonymous as there was an error when I tried to post it.
The important thing about this post was it talked about how to fix this problem, and yes I was not as smart as I should have been because I did click, not once but twice. For the anonymous responder who figured I never should have clicked because I should have known better, the email was very believable and Canada Post does have my email and address connected, because I recently signed up for a business account to access their business rate plan. So it was perfectly reasonable that Canada Post would be emailing me. My tech guy and Canada Post both said that many people were affected by this virus and weren't as lucky as I was to catch it right away.
HST in BC: funny how the links disappeared
I had a link to the Memorandum of Agreement between the Feds and BC... it was to the contract between the Feds and BC about how the HST deal was to be structured. I am pretty sure I read that the 1.6 Million signing bonus term was that we had to keep the HST in place for at least 2 years, but I can't remember if that was the right term or not.
If someone has time can they search and find a link to the July 23, 2009 Memorandum of Agreement called the "Comprehensive Integrated Tax Co-ordination AGreement" CITCA for short that sets out the terms conditions and instalment payment dates between Canada and BC? There's a similar CITCA between Canada and Ontario. Try www.canlii.org first.
I"m pretty sure the province pulled the link because it would blow holes in their threat of how much rescinding the HST will cost.
Box 85 on T4... but not on T4A
More pensioners are being required to pay their own premiums for extended health and dental plans. There's no box on the T4A for reporting these premiums.
Back in 2005, I lobbied for a Box on the T4 to report these premiums because they are medical expense, and often, the premiums plus the amount that isn't paid by the plans is enough to make a claim for medical expenses on your tax return.
I just noticed that since 2009, Sun Life premiums are taken from Public Works and Gov't Serivces Canada, Public Service Pension cheques, and there's no Box 85 on a T4A, which is how pensions are reported. Recently, I noticed that teachers in BC will be paying premiums for their health and dental plans on retirement.
Don't you think that T4A's should include a report just like T4's and that both should be mandatory reporting? After all union dues deductions are mandatory reporting, what's with this lack of mandatory reporting when it's your hard earned dollars going to third parties!
Please write to the Federal Minister of Finance in Ottawa to support my request for Box 85 on the T4 to be extended to include a Box 85 on the T4A, and for Box 85 to be mandatory reporting by employers and pension plans for both T4's and T4A's!
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