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Closure

February 19, 2024 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“The beautiful journey of today can only begin when we learn to let go of yesterday”

Steve Maraboli

My last post to this journal ended with this sentence:

“Anyway – I feel that it will not be long until the news here, at least, takes a turn for the better“.

The very next day…

Quite enough has been written in these postings over the last ten months concerning our abortive attempt at a trip of a lifetime, featuring an all bells and whistles safari to Botswana. If you somehow missed the saga of how British Airways wrote off our epic adventure (along with a considerable chunk of our savings) then simply use the search feature on the home page. A search for “British Airways” or any one of a number of expletives should return the information that you seek.

Back in December – shortly before Christmas – this post brought regular readers up to date with the current status of our long (out)standing insurance claims – by means of which we hoped to recover at least some of our outlay. At that point (back in November) the girl had received a partial payment from our main insurers but I had heard nothing. The post ended thus:

“We must, of course, needs be patient yet and wait and see what happens…”

So – back to where we started:

The very next day…

…I received in the post a cheque from our insurers. It was for the full amount of the claim (actually by a small but discernible margin rather more than I was expecting).

Hoo-bloomin’-rah!

Delighted as she was for me, The Girl was understandably put out that she had been left out of this little bonanza.

However – the very next day (again!)…

…another missive arrived from the insurers, this time including a cheque for the residue of her claim.

Hoo-bloomin’-rah-some-more!

Where does this leave us? Well – all the claims that could be met and all the payments that the various parties could not avoid making – are in. We have, between the two of us, recovered something in excess of $24,000 (CAD). That might seem impressive had we not laid out just slightly less than $40,000 (CAD) on the trip and the recovery operation as a whole.

Well – we did get a (hugely expensive) week in the UK, though much of that time was spent either on the phone to British Airways or being unable to sleep because of a growing sense of panic.

No matter. ‘Tis over and done and we have all the closure we are going to get.

I promise that I will do my damnedest not to mention it again.

Tags: Africa, British Airways, Holiday, incompetence, Money, safari, Travel

Get’n ‘er done!

September 2, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not”.

Bill Gates

Gentle readers may recall – should they have little better to do – that much earlier in the year all the talk in this forum was of major renovations to the basement of our splendid peninsula home. Some of those readers may well have already stayed with us in our basement and they might well concur that a little improvement would not go amiss.

The details of our thinking in this regard were first outlined in my usual annual ‘looking ahead‘ post way back in January. Sadly this later update – posted during May – gives chapter and verse as to how and why those earlier plans went up in smoke, largely as a result of the iniquitous increase in the price of raw materials – fueled by the pandemic – which saw the cost of our proposed refurbishment more than double.

At the time of writing prices have fallen back slightly but it is clearly going to be some time before they revert to sensible levels – assuming that they ever so do.

All was not entirely lost, however. Though even our stripped back renovation proposal was outwith any price we were prepared to pay, we have been effecting some more minor – but none the less important – home improvements throughout the summer.

As part of our major rebuild back in 2017 we replaced all bar three of our windows and sliders (patio doors). The reason that we did not do the last few was that we were at the time perilously close to exhausting our budget. Anyway – the long and the short of it is that they have all now been done, including this rather splendid new casement for my studio:

That should keep things a little warmer during the winter months!

We also finally lost our patience with our alarm system. Most houses here have such systems, not only for security purposes but also for the all important fire safety (these are mostly wood-framed houses after all). We inherited the contract for the old system when we purchased the property and it has been exhibiting the usual signs of technology that is about to expire – all manner of chirps and klaxons going off in the middle of the night as sensors fail.

The provider of this ailing system is based in the US rather than being local (the which would have been our preferred choice) and their call centre distinctly gives the impression of being somewhere even further south than that. I got fed up with spending hours on the phone to a foreign country whilst a most helpful but hard to comprehend operative tried to diagnose the problem without being able to see what was going on.

Enough was enough – we switched to a local company and they came and installed lots of shiny new hardware (at the same time covering our estate liberally with stickers and signs announcing that they are the new incumbents in the alarm system stakes).

So far – so good!

Finally – The Girl has long been advocating for our shop (garden shed, for UK readers) to be given a new coat of paint. Following the repainting of the exterior of the house last year we had a fair bit of each colour paint left and it was a no-brainer to give the shed a colour-coordinated update.

This has duly been done and very nice it looks too:

Tags: House, Money, plans, Renovation

Punched in the mouth!

May 12, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”

Mike Tyson

I promised in my last post that would I bring the gentle reader up to date with our progress with regard to the plans and resolutions that I boldly (or not-so-boldly) outlined in my customary start-of-the-year posting way back in January (different month – same lock-down!).

The observations that I made concerning work have panned out exactly as predicted: The Girl is working mostly from home and – though I didn’t teach during the winter term – I am currently in the early stages of a condensed version of the course that I taught last fall. Apart from being somewhat frenetic (since fourteen weeks worth of material is compressed into seven weeks) it seems to be going reasonably well thus far. Frankly the coursework delivery itself is not much of an issue. Doing the marking is more of a struggle.

I posted recently an update on my musical activities, so that just leaves one… big… area to deal with. There it is in the corner of the room… large, grey and with tusks and a trunk!

Given that travel (and much, much else) is currently out of the question we had decided that we would focus this year on carrying out renovations in our basement, to complement that which we did a few years back on the main floor (see pretty much any of my posts from late 2017/early 2018). We engaged a designer to come up with some proposals and contacted our exemplary contractor who did such a wonderful job upstairs and with our deck.

Well – these things all take time but we had hoped that we would be carrying out the desired works about now. We planned to turn the half-bathroom downstairs into a full bathroom – we aimed to replace the kitchenette – we decided to replace any of the windows that had not been done in the earlier project and we had the bright idea of carving out a fitness room from the large but relatively little used downstairs family room. Finally we would make good the remaining spaces and redo the flooring throughout. Although this would have involved a fair bit of work it was nothing compared with the extensive works we had had done back in 2017/18 and we anticipated that a budget of approximately 50% of what we had spent last time would suffice.

What we should have foreseen (particularly as our contractor warned us that this was going to be the case) was that the cost of building materials had not only shot up as a result of shortages arising from the pandemic lock-downs, but that they were continuing so to do. Even thus forewarned his initial estimate for the job came as a serious shock, equaling the figure that we had spent on the entire main-floor renovation a few years back.

Well – we simply don’t have that sort of money and we really don’t feel inclined to borrow at this point in our lives… particularly given the uncertain situation in the wider world.

Having thought long and hard we went back to our contractor with a proposal for a greatly stripped-down project – pretty much just sorting out the bathroom and replacing old windows. When the quote for this lesser work came back it proved still to entail spending a large sum of money and we once again found ourselves reluctant to give the go ahead.

And that is where we currently are. We don’t feel inclined to spend this sort of money on parts of the house that will be used chiefly by visitors from abroad (who knows when we will see any of them again?). There is also considerable uncertainty as to what will happen to material costs once the pandemic recedes. We would be really annoyed if we found that could do the job for significantly less simply by waiting for a year or so.

All of this naturally leaves us feeling somewhat down-hearted. The project had in part been intended as a focus for the year – given that travel was out of the question.

Now we will just have to think of something else.

Tags: House, Money, plans, Renovation

Fragile

February 21, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“If only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – The Sorrows of Young Werther

I watched the other day – on the splendid but disturbingly imperiled BBC – the latest in Alan Yentob’s arts strand – ‘Imagine’. The most timely subject of this episode was the delicate state of the arts in the UK (but by extension also throughout the western world) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The point was well made that the case for spending government monies to protect the arts at a time when the health service is all but overwhelmed and when old people are dying in care homes (as was certainly the case at the start of the pandemic) is extremely difficult to make. It is – of course – always difficult to mount any such convincing justification for the arts in times of crisis and disaster.

Except that – whereas Mazeroff’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ certainly depicts our physiological and safety needs as comprising the broad base of the pyramid, as one heads on upwards towards the top where love and belonging, esteem and self-actualisation are to be found, we once again rapidly discover (as a by-product of our unwanted incarceration through lock-down) that life without the arts, with all their magnificent variety and substance, loses a surprising measure of its meaning.

If that were not case enough for protection of our priceless and precious artistic assets then let us fall back on that ever reliable argument – economic benefit. In the UK alone the arts and culture sector contributes nearly £11 billion a year to the UK economy on a turnover of more than £21 billion per year – supporting in excess of 260,000 jobs. Even given that some £900 million of funding flows each year from central government into the arts and culture, the recuperation from the sector of £2.8 billion a year in tax revenue represents a very decent return.

The UK government has at least recognised the urgency of supporting the arts sector – the which was by and large the first to close in the COVID-19 lock-downs and will in all probability be the last to re-open – and has made £1.5 billion in funding available to keep companies and venues afloat.

All very reasonable as far as it goes – except that the arts is considerably more than just famous actors and musicians, well-renowned companies and grandiose venues. The majority of those who work in the arts and culture sector do so, in fact, as freelancers and as such are not covered by the government’s emergency funding arrangements. Anyone who has even tenuous connections with the arts world (as do I) will know of people whose livelihoods have all but disappeared overnight. If they are forced out of the arts for good a large chunk of the arts economy will disappear with them.

Please do spare a thought for such folk and do whatever you can to support them.

Tags: Arts, COVID-19, Money, Music, Theatre, work

Tax brakes! (sic)

May 2, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

I am one of that supposedly rare breed of souls (in all probability actually considerably less rare than urban myth would have us believe) that is happy to pay my taxes. Well – ‘happy’ might be going a bit far, but let us agree at least on ‘content’…

This does not – of course – imply that I am at all content with some of things upon which my tax dollars are spent, but that is a matter between me and my government (or would be, if I had one. As I am not eligible to vote here until such time as I can apply for and am accepted as a citizen it could be argued that I don’t actually have a government, though that does not stop them being eager to get their hands on my ill-gotten gains).

Should the gentle reader care to cast an eye back over the proceedings on this site he or she will discover a fair number of entries dealing with matters of taxation. Transferring one’s financial affairs from one continent to another is no trivial matter though, naturally, one in which revenue offices everywhere take a particularly keen interest. It is of no great import now – of course – all such issues having been settled. These days my tax affairs are simplicity itself – not least because The Girl and I employ an extremely efficient tax accountant (an old friend of hers) to process everything for us. Worth every cent, too!

The Canadian tax year runs from January to the end of December each year. Tax returns must be completed and outstanding monies paid by the end of April. Up to the end of the last tax year my income consisted solely of the three pensions paid to me in the UK, the which I transfer monthly to Canada at whatever favourable rate I have been able to negotiate. I simply submit the transfer slips for the year and on that basis my taxes are calculated.

Now – this should all be sufficiently straightforward that there be no surprises. We pay both Federal and Provincial taxes but the formulae for each are widely published and there are plenty of online tax calculators on the InterWebNet which can be used to predict how much should be put aside to cover the resultant bill.

I must admit to being slightly disconcerted by the fact that the three or four calculators that I tried this year all gave different results for the same initial data – but as they were all roughly within spitting distance of each other I resolved simply to save conservatively and to keep my fingers crossed.

The paperwork was submitted as usual and on the very last day possible – April 30th – I visited our tax accountant to pick up the account and pay the bill. I was in for a most pleasant surprise. The reckoning was several thousand dollars less than any of the estimates had indicated.

I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and I am certainly not complaining at this unexpected good fortune. I think I can also live with any feelings of guilt by which I might be assailed. I am – however – somewhat concerned that I clearly still don’t fully understand how tax arrangements here work.

Hmmm! More study required…

Tags: Canada, Money, Tax

Thanks for all the fish

November 1, 2016 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Douglas Adams – Book title

Pace the promise at the end of my last post (the final part of a trilogy on my tax transition from the UK to Canada over the last year) this unexpected fourth part details the delightful process of completing a reasonably complex UK tax return. The gentle reader will be relieved to know that I am going to skip all of the obvious bits and just concentrate on that which is out of the ordinary.

Completion of this particular return was complicated by the fact that – having been resident in the UK for 104 days from April 6th to July 19th 2015 – I was considered by HMRC to have been a UK resident for tax purposes for the whole tax year. To avoid being taxed in both countries for the period from July 19th 2015 (our date of landing) to April 5th 2016 (and having already paid my Canadian taxes up to December 31st) I needed to meet the criteria for a ‘split year treatment‘ for 2015/16, under which I would pay taxes in whichever country I was resident at any given point.

There are eight sets of circumstances under which one is deemed to have met the criteria for ‘split year treatment‘. The only one that applied in my circumstances was Case 3 – ‘Ceasing to have a home in the UK’. The HMRC’s ‘Tax Return Notes’ give a fair bit of information on the criteria as a whole but cheerfully send one off in search of document RDR3 – ‘Guidance Note: Statutory Residence Test (SRT)’ for further detail on each specific case. Herewith the relevant sections for Case 3:

Case 3: Ceasing to have a home in the UK

5.22 In this instance, you may receive split year treatment for a tax year if you leave the UK to live abroad and you cease to have a UK home.

You must:

– be UK resident in the tax year
– be UK resident for the previous tax year (whether or not it was a split year)
– be non-UK resident for the following tax year
– have one or more homes in the UK at the start of the tax year and at some point in the year cease to have any home in the UK for the rest of the tax year.

5.23 From the point you cease to have a home in the UK you must:

– spend fewer than 16 days in the UK
– in relation to a particular country, either:

– be present in that country at the end of each day for 6 months, or
– have your only home, or all your homes if you have more than 1, in that country within 6 months

Hmmm! That is all as clear as mud…

The other portion of the return that I had not previously encountered was that concerning Capital Gains Tax – for which the sale of our UK property made us potentially liable. The basic rules regarding Capital Gains Tax on property sales at the time that we sold the apartment were thus:

Capital Gains Tax could be subject to Private Residence Relief (PRR)
PRR was 100% if the property was one’s prime residence and was lived in for the whole time that it was owned
PRR might be reduced if the property was let for more than three years
no tax was payable in any case for the final 18 months of ownership

Our apartment in Buckinghamshire (which I had owned for more than fourteen years) had been let for more than three years at the point at which we sold it. We thus had to work out the level of PRR for which we might still be eligible. This was calculated by determining the profit made on the sale (the agreed selling price less the original purchase price) and by determining the percentage of months for which PRR might be applied. I had owned the property for 176 months, I/we had lived in it for 130 months and it had been let for 41 months. Given the exemption for the final 18 months of ownership this meant that I could apply for PRR to cover 84% of the capital gain.

That would yet have left a chunk of tax owing, but there were – fortunately – a couple of other reliefs that could be applied:

Selling costs (estate agent and legal fees) could be set against the profit
We could apply for Letting Relief for the period that the apartment was actually tenanted
There was a general Capital Gains Tax allowance of £11,000

A tortuous calculation led us to the conclusion that all of the potential taxes and reliefs fundamentally cancelled each other out – leaving us after all nothing to pay on the sale of our home. The tax return was duly completed and sent to the United Kingdom at the start of June this year. Shortly before I started writing this series of posts I was finally in receipt of a further rebate from HMRC, though they also sent a note which somewhat unkindly suggested that this refund had been based on my calculations – which they claim not to have checked! I suspect that this is just to give them some wiggle-room should they find any way that they can claw back some of what they paid me.

We shall see…

Tags: Money, Retirement, Tax

The price we pay

October 25, 2016 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

“Tax is not a four-letter word; rather, it’s the price we pay for the country we want.”

Alex Himelfarb

My last post went some way towards explaining the vexatious complexity of our tax affairs upon leaving the UK last year and heading across the pond to Canada. I promised – for those who simply could not sleep without knowing how the issues had been resolved – to reveal all. As I am (mostly) a man of my word…

I had, naturally, taken the trouble to consult Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) well in advance of our departure from the UK to discover exactly what steps would need to be taken to ensure that I ceased paying tax in the UK on our departure and started so doing in Canada. A most Helpful Young Chap had given me chapter and verse… though as it turned out not all of the chapters and rather less verse than he might have!

He did advise that I should acquire – from the HMRC website – “Form Canada-Individual” (for those seeking this document it should be noted that it does not – unlike most other HMRC forms – have a form number!). At the bottom of the first page of this document there is a box labelled “For use by Canada Revenue Agency” and the guidance notes helpfully state that once completed the form should be sent to the “Tax Services Office of the Canada Revenue Agency for the area in which you reside“, for them to stamp and to sign. The HYC from the HMRC was unable to elaborate further on this instruction so I figured I would have to wait until we got to Canada and to ask questions there.

A few days subsequent to our arrival I paid a visit to the Revenue Canada building in Victoria, thinking that this would be the best way to find out whom I should approach. The Canada Revenue office may well be open for business but the building itself certain isn’t – not to the public at any rate. There is no open foyer or reception desk – just tight security and locked doors. I was forced to resort to the InterWebNet instead and – taking what seemed the best bet – sent my “Form Canada – Individual” to the Revenue Canada office in Vancouver.

Nothing at all happened for two months but eventually a reply limped into our mailbox. According to Revenue Canada Vancouver my application could not be processed because I had not provided them with my Social Insurance Number (SIN). This was – of course – because I had not been able to ascertain from anyone what the correct procedure was. I duly added the requested information and resubmitted the whole application – as directed by Vancouver – to Ottawa.

This time a mere month elapsed before Revenue Canada once more returned my application. Apparently they did not have the required information to determine that I truly was now a Canadian Resident for tax purposes. I would needs complete and return Form NR74 – “Determination of Residency Status (Entering Canada)” along with my resubmitted application before they could proceed.

Manfully resisting the temptation to enquire as to why Revenue Canada could not have sent me this form the first time they returned my application, I duly completed it. I could not help but notice that the information requested was mysteriously similar to that already submitted on “Form Canada – Individual” – but thought it best not to point this out either.

Another hiatus ensued.

Eventually – some six months after setting the whole process in motion – I finally received from Revenue Canada the duly stamped and signed copy of “Form Canada – Individual“, which I promptly sent back to HMRC in the UK. I was now registered as a tax payer in Canada – effective from the date that we landed.

Now – the Kickass Canada Girl has a long-standing relationship with a tax accountant in Victoria, who agreed to handle my tax affairs as well as the Girl’s. She was most helpful to us both in completing our tax returns following the end of the 2015 tax year on December 31st. Our attention was drawn to some highly beneficial rebates of which we would not otherwise have been aware and – as a result – my tax bill was considerably less scary than it might have been.

All that remained was for me to persuade HMRC to stop taxing me a second time (or first – if you see what I mean) in the UK and to return any excess tax that they might already have deducted.

The tale of how that went must – however – wait for next time.

Tags: Canada, Money, Pension, Tax

Big fat zero

April 13, 2015 in Life in England, Moving to Canada | Permalink

“Generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money, ’cause they’re convinced that there is a free lunch.”

Ron Bloom

We all know this to be a truism – that there is no free lunch and that always, always, the little guy ends up paying – and through the nose at that!

Except – perhaps – when it comes to that totally wonderful organisation – Freecycle!

You may be familiar with their mission statement:

“Welcome! The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 5,238 groups with 8,743,027 members around the world. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by local volunteers (them’s good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on ‘Browse Groups’ above the search box. Have fun!”

Not for the first time we find ourselves massively grateful that such an organisation exists. We have in just a few days found a good home for my treasured piano, for a surplus double bed and for some old bookcases that had been in use in the garage (‘shop’ to our Canadian friends) to house the usual tool-shed detritus.

If one were to ask for advice in this day and age regarding the disposal of an old upright piano the received wisdom would be that “you couldn’t give it away”. Except that it turns out that you can! Selling a piano may indeed be a near impossibility (given that most of us do not have the space for such a beast even should we actually want a real one rather than an electronic substitute) but Freecycle has enabled us to locate a good home for the instrument with someone who will appreciate it and use it but who couldn’t possibly have justified the cost of purchasing one.

Likewise the bed – really nothing special though in good condition – went to someone who was so grateful to have it that it hurt… and the bookcases – which I was all for taking to the dump (as we call landfills here in the UK) – have found a home with someone who ‘distresses’ furniture. Not that they will need to do too much in this case!

Each of these items came into our possession in a different way. They have all served us well and owe us nothing. We are delighted that we can now freely pass them on to others for whom they will have their own uses and meanings.

How satisfying is that?

Tags: Freecycle, Money, moving

Much progress…

March 30, 2015 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

In a previous posting – released into the wild in the earliest days of this unruly month and somewhat cheekily entitled “Much ado” – I offered the determined reader a ‘shopping list’ of things that must be done to progress our emigration, now that we have handed in our notices to our respective (and understandably heartbroken) employers.

It ran thus:

In the immediate future we must:

set in motion our remaining pension plans
ensure that everything required for the smooth transition of our tax arrangements has been done
check that the necessary finances are in place
book our one-way flights to BC
arrange surveys and obtain quotes from a number of international moving companies
push through the refurbishments necessary at our Buckinghamshire apartment
agree a notice period with our tenant

The gentle reader is doubtless eager to know how things are progressing. Herewith my end-of-month report:

My remaining pension provider (the School) has been alerted to the upcoming transition and I await the necessary paperwork.
Much research has been done on the means to effect the necessary tax changes. I have a feeling that some professional advice may yet be required if all is to progress seamlessly.
As far as is possible at this point the required finances have been marshaled into the appropriate positions.
Our one-way flights to Victoria have been booked – taking full advantage of the Air miles accrued during the Kickass Canada Girl’s sojourn in beautiful British Columbia in 2012.
We have been surveyed to the utmost degree by our panel of international movers and have on this very day confirmed a booking with our chosen tranter.
We have effected the necessary repairs and redecorations at our Buckinghamshire apartment.
Our tenant has agreed to vacate the apartment at the very start of May.

Thus far – so good… I will naturally report further on the next steps to be taken as they become apparent.

Full steam ahead!

Tags: Canada, Money, moving, Pension, Retirement

Much ado

March 4, 2015 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

There is – it would seem – suddenly much to be done…

Having handed in our respective notices to our respective employers the Kickass Canada Girl and I are now rapidly becoming aware of just how much has to be studied, planned, decided, arranged, booked and confirmed… and how little time – quite regardless of the fact that our proposed transatlantic transition is still more than four months away – there is to accomplish everything.

In the immediate future we must:

set in motion our remaining pension plans
ensure that everything required for the smooth transition of our tax arrangements has been done
check that the necessary finances are in place
book our one-way flights to BC
arrange surveys and obtain quotes from a number of international moving companies
push through the refurbishments necessary at our Buckinghamshire apartment
agree a notice period with our tenant

There is – naturally – much more to be done, but that will do to get us started. I will – of course – report further as things progress.

Heads down – full speed ahead!

Tags: Canada, Money, moving, Pension, Retirement

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Money

Closure

Get’n ‘er done!

Punched in the mouth!

Fragile

Tax brakes! (sic)

Thanks for all the fish

The price we pay

Big fat zero

Much progress…

Much ado

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