Odyssey continued
Odyssey continued
By the time Saturday came around the food was becoming quite monotonous, I ordered up leftovers from home, this was the remainder of my chinese meal I was so looking forward to before my accident. As I didn't know the hospital protocol at that stage I ate the meal cold. This wasn't such a good idea after all as I started to feel quite grotty shortly after, I felt like I was going to choke and all I wanted to do was sit on the side of the bed. I found myself fighting off insistent nursing staff and a couple of doctors in order to get myself where I wanted to be and I thought I’d be okay. By this stage I'd turned the room into quite a ruckus. Unfortunately for me it was lights out.
My recollection of the next 24/36 hours were quite sketchy Other than a frantic ride to somewhere, me of course flat on my back on the bed drifting in and out of consciousness with a whole lot of nursing staff around me working feverishly.
As it turned out it wasn't the chinese. I had a root canal performed on one of my teeth earlier on that week and the dentist gave me some antibiotics to take before he performed the procedure, I thought they were for after, the tooth was badly infected, for some reason when I got to hospital I stopped taking the antibiotics and the infection flared up.
As a young girl, my wife Pam would often ask her father “how did that person die?”, his answer would often say “through want of breath”. how very true that nearly was.
The problem the nursing staff in ICU had was they couldn't get me to breathe, Pam got a phone call at 3 AM Sunday morning to get up to the hospital. When I came round I saw two very relieved faces my wife and son
Unfortunately one of the drugs they pumped into me to stabilise me had and the effect of covering me with a bright red rash all over. This later had the medicos so baffled they had a photographer come in to take photos of my entire body to send the pics off to some boffins at Waikato University to come back with recommendations on how to treat the rash. Yep you guessed it, nothing is private and modesty goes out the window when you're in hospital. The upside was there was no conviction for indecent photos the downside was there was no answer as to what was causing the rash.
My trusty iPhone became invaluable, In the hours when I wasn't comatose or being prodded and poked by the nursing staff I was able to listen to my audiobook collection although at times it was hard tell what was fact (in ICU) and what was fiction. The drugs I was on were having a powerful effect on my mind.
That will do for now, the story continues in ICU
Tax planning before 1 April 2017
For most taxpayers, 31 March represents the end of the financial year. In the lead up to ‘year-end’ there are a number of actions that business owners may want to take to avoid missing the boat on simple tax planning opportunities.
Trading stock: stock can be valued at the lower of cost and market selling value (“MSV”), and generally it will be beneficial to use a lower MSV where possible. But to use MSV you must have evidence that this represents the market value of the specific stock items at or about balance date. The IRD have indicated that suitable evidence includes independent or internal valuations by suitably qualified persons of the price of goods and actual sales for a reasonable period before and/or after balance date.
Accruals and provisions: a tax deduction should be available if you are definitively committed to an expense at year end and can reliably estimate the amount. Ensure all expenditure is captured and accrued to minimise the amount of taxable income. One exception is employee related accruals that are tax deductible if they are incurred and are paid within 63 days after balance date (so by 6 June); consider paying any staff bonuses by then to gain a current year tax deduction.
Bad debts: to be tax deductible bad debts must be actually written off before year end – it’s no good booking the journals after balance date as part of your year-end accounts preparation. There also needs to be evidence that the debt was considered “bad” (e.g. review of accounts receivable, debt-enforcement notices and other actions taken).
Assets: if you are planning on buying any depreciable assets (e.g. plant and equipment), a full month’s depreciation can be claimed in the month of purchase, so it may be worth buying replacement assets just before 31 March.
Relevant to companies only:
Charitable donations: in order to claim a donation deduction, it needs to be paid in cash before 31 March. The amount of the donation is limited to the amount of a company’s net income in the absence of the donation. Hence, if a company has made a loss it might be beneficial to push the payment into the next year.
Shareholder current accounts: if a company is owed money by shareholders, consider paying commercially justifiable shareholder-employee salaries or paying a dividend to settle the debts. If not done, there may be fringe benefit tax or deemed dividend issues.
Imputation Credit Account (ICA) balance: ensure the imputation credit account does not have a debit balance at 31 March, otherwise penalties will be incurred. If the ICA may be in debit, consider a making a voluntary provisional tax payment before 31 March.
HAVE WE GOT YOU THINKING?
Give us a call on (04) 563 6965 or email: dennis@taxman.co.nz or shawn@taxman.co.nz
Keep an eye out for April’s article!
TAX DATES TO REMEMBER
- 20th March . 2017 - Monthly employers PAYE payment…
- 28th March. 2017 - Bi monthly GST Return for Jan/Feb 2017…
- 31st March 2017 - End of the Financial Year…..