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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (33129)	4/14/2008 9:01:30 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 217818

I suspect you are right on those points. It did seem a dodgy example to get and seemed like more of a "sob story" than a very good example of lack of ethics. But there are plenty of other robust examples. Not only did I think I could do it myself, I did do it myself, successfully, and did save the money. But I paid $900 an hour for two lawyers to discuss our tax case and $480 an hour for one of them to do the work [total about $16,000] and it was worth it. I don't think I'd have figured it out in a timely manner and there was too much at stake. I prefer to hire specialists to do things which are out of my ability if the consequences of me messing up are substantial. Filling in a transfer for a house is just a bit of paperwork. Failing to succeed in fighting the IRD is another matter altogether - for the amount of money involved. Fortunately, the lawyers found the right way to do it. We had aleady hired professional accountants to handle the same matter, but I wanted serious talent so also hired the big guns. The accountant sat us down to tell us we were bankrupt [meaning we would have a very large tax bill to pay], so I pulled out the legal opinion from the multi-storey building downtown at $480 an hour and she hummed and aahed and having earlier disparaged lawyers as not knowing accountancy, decided that we didn't need to revisit the matter. The IRD didn't like it, but the law was solid and we not only got away with it, but the mistakes I had been making were mostly in the IRD's favour [a very good thing when fighting the IRD] so we got a big loss to carry forward. The expert accountant, to whom we had paid good money at the professional fees rate, didn't know about another aspect of tax law applying to overseas investment so there were some unpaid tax to pay and penalties plus use of money for 3 years while the professionals all goofed around not knowing the law that they were making and enforcing. The outcome was great for us! Thank goodness for Raymond Yee and $480 an hour lawyers. Thank goodness I didn't rely on the professional talents of the accountants. It was good to throw in the towel when I did on handling it myself. Luckily, one of the mistakes I made enabled the lawyer to subsequently use a calculation method which wouldn't have been available if I had done our own taxes correctly in the beginning. That unusual method saved our bacon. NZ tax laws were subsequently changed and I bet that our case played a part in the change as our position was targeted. Fortunately, I had dotted a lot of i's and crossed a lot of t's over the previous decade and was impeccably honest in tax matters. The RID go over things with a fine tooth comb to catch people. I knew that, so was always mindful to have things right [in an honest sort of way if not technically correct]. Mqurice