The Man ( f*** the man)
29/08/08 12:59
Warning: Boring angry rant approaching.
It took me a couple years after moving out of the house to figure out that I had to pay taxes. When I finally did, I was all freaked out that the government was going to come and take away my birthday and throw me in jail, so I went to an accountant. I have had good and bad accountants over the years, but they all know how to deal with the government better than I do, so that was a good move. I finally came across Judi Brown and she has been as much a counsellor as an accountant. She's good people, we like Judi.
So because of my fear of the taxman in the early days, I was always very careful to declare all my income, I rarely claimed all my expenses and I figured that if the day ever came that "the man" took a close look at my books, I would be ok. Of course that was not the case. After living in California for a year, i got a letter from the government on a trip home. It was a tax assessment for 75 thousand dollars. As you can probably imagine an unexpected bill for 75 k isn't on my list of things that I was expecting on my little vacation home. I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of ching just laying around. I actually laughed because I thought it was a mistake.
Two years later Judi had waded through all the crap, re-filed 7 years (they actually asked us to re-file 10 years worth despite rules not requiring Canadian humans to hold onto tax documents for longer than 7 years) of tax returns, PROVED to them that we were right, and in the end, because I've always been honest, we ended up with a sizeable credit.
I mean, that's how it works right? You do everything right and when they ask about it, you show them everything and then they say "oh sorry, our bad, you did the right thing."
No, that's not how it works at all.
How it works is this: They can't stand losing, so they change the rules, disallow your credit, and hit you with another bill. You know why? Because they can't stand to be wrong. They won't pay you back a bit of the money they owe you, and they make the rules so they can change them whenever they want. At this point they have broken their own rules twice trying to make an honest tax filing citizen pay money he doesn't owe and doesn't have.
You wonder why people hate the government? I used to. Now I know. Fuck them.
I can't win. It has already cost me thousands of dollars fighting this and now it will cost me even more. In the end, even when I am proven right, it will have cost me so much that I will be paying it off for years. When you are self employed in an industry as sketchy as Action sports, and photography, it is a constant struggle to make ends meet, and this is the kind of thing that just pushes your head underwater and holds you there. The last bubbles are draining out of my lungs as we speak. I'm drowning.
It took me a couple years after moving out of the house to figure out that I had to pay taxes. When I finally did, I was all freaked out that the government was going to come and take away my birthday and throw me in jail, so I went to an accountant. I have had good and bad accountants over the years, but they all know how to deal with the government better than I do, so that was a good move. I finally came across Judi Brown and she has been as much a counsellor as an accountant. She's good people, we like Judi.
So because of my fear of the taxman in the early days, I was always very careful to declare all my income, I rarely claimed all my expenses and I figured that if the day ever came that "the man" took a close look at my books, I would be ok. Of course that was not the case. After living in California for a year, i got a letter from the government on a trip home. It was a tax assessment for 75 thousand dollars. As you can probably imagine an unexpected bill for 75 k isn't on my list of things that I was expecting on my little vacation home. I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of ching just laying around. I actually laughed because I thought it was a mistake.
Two years later Judi had waded through all the crap, re-filed 7 years (they actually asked us to re-file 10 years worth despite rules not requiring Canadian humans to hold onto tax documents for longer than 7 years) of tax returns, PROVED to them that we were right, and in the end, because I've always been honest, we ended up with a sizeable credit.
I mean, that's how it works right? You do everything right and when they ask about it, you show them everything and then they say "oh sorry, our bad, you did the right thing."
No, that's not how it works at all.
How it works is this: They can't stand losing, so they change the rules, disallow your credit, and hit you with another bill. You know why? Because they can't stand to be wrong. They won't pay you back a bit of the money they owe you, and they make the rules so they can change them whenever they want. At this point they have broken their own rules twice trying to make an honest tax filing citizen pay money he doesn't owe and doesn't have.
You wonder why people hate the government? I used to. Now I know. Fuck them.
I can't win. It has already cost me thousands of dollars fighting this and now it will cost me even more. In the end, even when I am proven right, it will have cost me so much that I will be paying it off for years. When you are self employed in an industry as sketchy as Action sports, and photography, it is a constant struggle to make ends meet, and this is the kind of thing that just pushes your head underwater and holds you there. The last bubbles are draining out of my lungs as we speak. I'm drowning.
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wrong, wrong, wrong.
04/04/08 01:47
disclaimer: it's 10 till 2 and I've just arrived
home,
an email aimed me here, and what I found made me choke on my perrier as I tried to understand how anyone who knew anything about culture or the life of ANYONE under the age of 70 could, with a straight face, write this piece of shit*:
"Big Air
Riders and skiers are the new constellations, when they turn shooting stars and light up the night at the big-on-awe Big Air. Join the 15,000-strong star-gazing crowd, as the best pro skiers and riders launch overhead to the thumping beats of live music. The pros lay it all on the line to own the night sky."
Background:
As I grew up, I watched as the super successful Westbeach Contest, that filled empty Whistler beds every spring, was co-opted and became the World Ski and Snowboard Festival. I watched as the once respectable contest was taken over by new sponsors and became a backdrop for the expanded "cultural" events, and then diminished into a regional affair that drew more local media than international credibility, and I could see why. I knew that the future was worse, but this year just seems so, so much worse. As far as I can tell, the title sponsor of the halfpipe event is a vodka brand.
Wow.
I wonder why the Ski and snowboard industry has run, not walked, away from this event.
Does anyone that is involved in the promotion of this event even ski or snowboard anymore? Did any of you actually grow up in the culture of the mountains? The WSSF has always been a marketing push to fill beds in the shoulder season, that's no secret or surprise. And there is nothing wrong with that, but at some point the success of the peripheral events overshadowed the reason we are all here in the first place, and the "festival" pissed on its roots in favour of a MTV/Mountain Dew/LCD spew fest that has little to do with anything but self perpetuation and narcissism.
I'm sick to death of the shitty shit. I'll say what every real snowboarder is thinking: Bring back the Westbeach Contest. Put the snowboard back into the "ski and snowboard festival". I challenge the organizers of the WSSF to make this festival into a legitimate part of the contest scene, and to bring us back some credibility, not just the hotel visits.
It's as simple as this: If the best snowboarders in the world aren't here for the contest next year, you've failed.
*ok so as bad as that was, the deeper I looked into the site, the worse the fucking generic, marketing buzzword, nothing-speak
got. Someone got paid a bunch of money to sound like they were young and hip. My guess is that they are either a) a 56 year old junior college drop-out who claims to be "still really down with the youth". b) Socially isolated, borderline personalities with anxiety disorders. c) Editors from Ski Magazine. d) all of the above
an email aimed me here, and what I found made me choke on my perrier as I tried to understand how anyone who knew anything about culture or the life of ANYONE under the age of 70 could, with a straight face, write this piece of shit*:
"Big Air
Riders and skiers are the new constellations, when they turn shooting stars and light up the night at the big-on-awe Big Air. Join the 15,000-strong star-gazing crowd, as the best pro skiers and riders launch overhead to the thumping beats of live music. The pros lay it all on the line to own the night sky."
Background:
As I grew up, I watched as the super successful Westbeach Contest, that filled empty Whistler beds every spring, was co-opted and became the World Ski and Snowboard Festival. I watched as the once respectable contest was taken over by new sponsors and became a backdrop for the expanded "cultural" events, and then diminished into a regional affair that drew more local media than international credibility, and I could see why. I knew that the future was worse, but this year just seems so, so much worse. As far as I can tell, the title sponsor of the halfpipe event is a vodka brand.
Wow.
I wonder why the Ski and snowboard industry has run, not walked, away from this event.
Does anyone that is involved in the promotion of this event even ski or snowboard anymore? Did any of you actually grow up in the culture of the mountains? The WSSF has always been a marketing push to fill beds in the shoulder season, that's no secret or surprise. And there is nothing wrong with that, but at some point the success of the peripheral events overshadowed the reason we are all here in the first place, and the "festival" pissed on its roots in favour of a MTV/Mountain Dew/LCD spew fest that has little to do with anything but self perpetuation and narcissism.
I'm sick to death of the shitty shit. I'll say what every real snowboarder is thinking: Bring back the Westbeach Contest. Put the snowboard back into the "ski and snowboard festival". I challenge the organizers of the WSSF to make this festival into a legitimate part of the contest scene, and to bring us back some credibility, not just the hotel visits.
It's as simple as this: If the best snowboarders in the world aren't here for the contest next year, you've failed.
*ok so as bad as that was, the deeper I looked into the site, the worse the fucking generic, marketing buzzword, nothing-speak
got. Someone got paid a bunch of money to sound like they were young and hip. My guess is that they are either a) a 56 year old junior college drop-out who claims to be "still really down with the youth". b) Socially isolated, borderline personalities with anxiety disorders. c) Editors from Ski Magazine. d) all of the above