June 20, 2008 by Dan White.

Dear Editor

Hi Dan,
what’s your tax advise on dental and health services.  I’m needing some dental work and It’ll cost about $2,ooo.oo.  How do I expend it?
E

Hi E

Nice to hear from you on this fine last day of spring day.
Your medical expenses are deductible. HOWEVER!
The interesting thing is that we all have a standard medical expenses we can write off, however our ever money hungry government has set it up that you can take all your medial expenses minus 3% of your net income. So if you spend $2,000 in medical and earn $64,000 or more in net income, you have to subtract $1,926 (the maximum deduction in this formula.)
The government now only allows a maximim amount of medical expenses of $10,000 which is outrageous.
So in your case your deduction would be around $74. which is a joke and an insult to what Canada stands for.

You would be better off paying your dentist for other business services than dental work. Of course it has to be real.
It is a sick government that would effectively remove the average person’s medical expenses. their threshold where you don’t benefit is below the countries average income.

Oh Canada, I stand medical expense barred for thee. It is time for a tax revolt about revolting government tax greed.
Dan

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November 10, 2007 by Dan White.

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November 9, 2007 by Dan White.

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September 14, 2007 by Dan White.

Dear Editor,

What does “Christalizing Losses Mean?” We just recievedadvice on what to do about some bad investments.

Dear Investor,

Basically it is part of a process of being a fool in the stock market and not understanding Holistic  risk management.

The concept is making a decision to hold or Crystalize. Often the advisor recommends holding firm in the face of losses in the stock-market to benefit from the bounce back. To me this is like being a mouse and avoiding the cat, so you can eat it’s food when the cat is not watching.The idea of holding is based on the fact that markets have historically turned around so eventually the investment comes good. Or another way of looking at this is hoping you don’t lose your entire investment.

Crystallizing is the process of selling to lock in a loss. Wipe the slate clean and begin again. The idea is to have an amount to offset other capital gains. This may or may not be useful or beneficial… it is just an option.

You need to know when to hold em and when to fold em, and know when to walk away. Learn how to reduce your losses and when not to take the risk. 

Over all most people really don’t know what they don’t know they don’t know and make serious decisions without all the knowledge. I have a very jaded viewpoint on investments in General…. My lessons have taught me a huge amount on Risk Management and has evolved a process of Holistic Risk Management, a process that I think is exclusive to WNBC. 

Yesterday, I had to work with a client who put a lot of money with a high profile promoter of Whole Life Insurance with an educational component, where there was misreprentation, invoves vicarious responsibility for a very well known insurance company…. the client’s borrowed money against his house, investment has shrunk 45%….. and not only does the investment not pay the interest, which he now has to pay, but has experienced a big lossin his portfolio.

So the concept of crystallizing or holding is a decision that needs to be holistic in nature. Most people make bad investments. The odds of long term success following “Conventional Wisdom” is not good.

I for one have learned some painful lessons about investing.

Best Regards 

Dan 

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April 7, 2007 by Dan White.

Dear Editor,

What kind of stuff is included in Petty Cash?

I really don’t think B. has a petty cash float – but there were receipts already setup in a petty cash file –
The receipts consist of blank receipts with no vendor name, just an amount and/or receipts for small foods items.

How do I handle this.

Thanks

S

Hi S,
 

Just like in everything else around audit ready bookkeeping;  thoughts and perspectives continue to evolve.
 

I had an auditor say to me one day. “How I see the topic of Petty Cash is; there is no such expense, I want to see what the business expense is.”
 

This caused me to stop and rethink my concept of petty cash.
 

In the old days, my thinking was that the various small expenses that could be put in petty cash saved detailed story writing for small expenses and was a good catch all for things that we did not have an official category for.
 

My new thinking is. There is nothing that does not fall into categories that we already have. (If I am wrong, just let me know and I will add the category to ARBooks.)
 

Petty cash is now in my mind a box where we keep cash  (A cash float)  for little things that need cash to pay for. One either writes a cheque made out to petty cash and does no entries in BKS for the expenses. Or they put a cash deposit in the box and record that amount of dollars in Income in ARBooks.
 

Then what ever the expenses are they are entered into the correct category in ARBooks.   This is a shift in thinking to bring Petty Cash into alignment with the purpose of ARBooks which is to make a user fully aware of how they spend money.
 

Consider this…. John spends $400 a year in pizza and $200 on coffee and $300 on bottled water for the office…. but his petty cash recordings show $900 in what way is John wiser? The answer is that Petty Cash does not inform the user, and when petty cash gets too high, it needlessly attracts the attention of CRA.
 

So let’s LL move away from promoting the use of small amounts go into Petty cash. “All expenses are real and none are petty when they are added up.”
 

Best Regards
 

Dan
 

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April 4, 2007 by Dan White.

Dear Editor,

I have some promotional items to claim 2006 Air Photography business.
 
In previous return years I may not have understood or done it properly in BKS. For example, For a donated photograph and frame; in addition to the material costs can I also claim costs for completing the photograph, such as my aircraft operational cost/hr and my hourly rate for editing and photo preparation ?
 
Thanks in advance for your help with an answer.
K