Archive for March, 2010

A healthy man and his healthy bank account

March 25th, 2010

Health is not all about money
I went back to the gym this morning. It’s on the top floor of the mall across the street from where we live, convenient, clean and a nice clientele. I had been a regular there for some years and didn’t think it really did me any good other than keeping the guilt down. When the recession started and I lost a few of my writing clients and my income dropped drastically, I cut back on as many expenses as I could. The gym was first out of the window. Other things followed quickly until I was on an even keel.

The monthly payment problem
One of the problems of joining a gym is the financial side. I have no complaint about the monthly cost, but rather about the ‘contract’ that you have to sign. The contract is usually for a minimum of 24 months and payments are made through your credit card, making it virtually impossible to cancel. Whatever happens, the payments go through on the specified date every month. You get up feeling tired and don’t go, that’s your problem. You feel like dropping out for the winter – that’s your problem. If you take a holiday or become ill, you bring a copy of the air-tickets or hotel booking or a doctor’s letter and they credit you with the missed weeks or months.

You are locked in
I hate the “locked in” feeling of such a contract. Another place that I gave up on was the art school and my painting group there. It was just plain expensive but here the deal I signed was for monthly payments via the credit card, only for the months that I attend. No long term contracts.

Back to the gym
I was wrong about the ‘no benefits’ from going to the gym. After I stopped going there I began walking in the streets and I quite enjoyed the change in scenery and faces. I soon began to find excuses not to walk. After a month or so I wasn’t walking at all. Then I found myself short of breath whenever I had to walk. I panted up a single flight of stairs and worst of all, I found myself walking unsteadily, like an old man, weaving my way down the sidewalk. That decided me.

Walking lessons
Some years ago, a young man appeared in town and offered free walking lessons. We would meet at 8 of an evening and he would lead a group of 20 people through the streets in single file. Often he would stop and take a critical look at each one of us as we passed him. He then came over and explained how we were walking, why it was wrong and what we had to do to correct it. I remember his lessons very clearly and I still walk to his specifications. So here I am, back in the gum and getting fitter every day.

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Ever been in that nightmare where you forget where you parked your car?

March 24th, 2010

This guy was dead drunk and forgot where he parked
A property investor lost his $200,000 Lamborghini sports car because he was too drunk to remember where he parked it. Okay, so he was in a strange town and he was blotto, but still…, a Lamborghini…

He lied
To make matters worse, Glenn Knowles, 35, who co-owned the car with Robert Mant, 29, then lied to his friend and the police, claiming he had no idea what had happened to it. He admitted taking the car from his friend’s house when police showed him images of the car being driven and said he had been “too embarrassed” to admit his stupidity.

Insurance scam?
Was this an attempted insurance swindle? Knowles and Mant were accused in Guildford Crown Court in England during a six-day trial of plotting to swindle their insurance company. The jury accepted that the accused had forgotten where he parked the car. Despite having one of those hi-tech, non-fail tracking devices, the Lamborghini has disappeared.

The jury
The jury accepted Knowles’s claim that he had no idea what had happened to the car after his drunken night out and the pair were acquitted. The jury also heard that this is not the first expensive car he had misplaced. One a previous occasion he couldn’t find a Mercedes after a night out in Kingston, Surrey. The car was eventually found parked behind a night club.

Lamborghini Gallardo
The court heard that on December 17, 2008 Mant parked the Lamborghini Gallardo outside his home in Epsom, Surrey. The next morning he realized it was missing and his neighbor told him he had seen the car being driven away. Mant called Knowles, who at that point claimed he did not know where it was but when the car was tracked via number plate recognition systems, it showed it being driven towards Gillingham, Kent.

Property investor
Knowles, who earns the equivalent of nearly R2-million a year from a property portfolio, admitted in court that he had went into Mant’s home and took the keys to the Lamborghini before driving to Gillingham where he met his parents in a pub. He said he might have driven the car while drunk to Rochester, where he continued drinking, but he did not think he would have taken it on to Maidstone, where he ended his evening. He told the court that before taking a taxi home at 4am, he had been unable to find the car.

Evidence
So, the jury was told, he dropped the keys at Mant’s house and didn’t tell anyone what he had done. The two men then reported the car as stolen and put in an insurance claim. They were subsequently charged with conspiring to commit fraud. The men told police they had no intention to get rid of the vehicle and had owned a string of high-powered expensive cars since they were in their early 20′s. Easy come, easy go!

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Two things in life are certain – death and taxes

March 23rd, 2010

Death and taxes
It’s a rather fatalistic and sardonic proverb. It draws on the actual inevitability of death to highlight the difficulty in avoiding the burden of taxes. The first to use the expression was Daniel Defoe, way back in 1726.

US states decides to publish the names of tax cheats
The US government has decided to get tough with tax cheats. Americans who don’t pay their taxes not only face hefty fines, can have their property seized or their wages witheld. The new decision means that they could find themselves named and shamed on the Internet. Imagine receiving a call from a buddy who tells you that he read all about you on Facebook.

Maryland
On Thursday the state of Maryland published its annual “Caught in the Web” list of the 50 biggest tax dodgers in the state, along with the amount the scofflaws owe on the Internet. Surprise! Not fair, I was waiting for my accountant! Hey, my wife forgot to post the check!

What you see
At the top of this year’s list is the name and address of a resident of a town near Baltimore, who owes the state more than half a million dollars. I wonder if he’s seen it? Hard on his heels is a company that owes more than $400,000. Maryland began publishing its list 10 years ago and since then, “We’ve brought in 25 million dollars as a result of shaming these folks into paying up,” says a spokeswoman for the comptroller’s office.

Connecticut
In Connecticut the internet system worked well, bringing 3,000 tax cheats to heel and adding 190 million dollars to the state coffers.

New York
Based on the success of Connecticut, Maryland and some 20 other states that name and shame tax cheats, New York launched its own “site of shame” this month, hoping to recoup billions in back taxes. Top of the 250 individual tax-dodgers appearing on the New York list is a guy who has tax warrants against him for more than 16 million dollars, including one for more than 14 million dollars in sales tax.

Public information
No one can complain about the bad publicity. The names and debts are public information because judgments were recorded in state courts against individuals and companies before they appeared on the lists.

It works here too
In the apartment building where I live we always had a few condo owners who were way behind with their dues. One year a tough chairman decided to solve the problem by sticking a list of names of the culprits on the wall of the elevator. The problem disappeared overnight and has never reappeared.

It’s just not fair.
Every time I hear about someone who cheats on his taxes I get annoyed, not because I am such a goody-goody, but for the simple reason that I feel that I am paying his taxes. How else does the government make up for the missing funds?

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