The Reunion

This past weekend I attended a wonderful reunion of my friends, classmates and acquaintances in Montreal.  The era was from the late 1950s, 1960s and possibly the 1970s as well.  It was a time of great Rock & Roll music and dancers, high school sweethearts, parties and classic movies. We paid tribute to the owners of a juke-box festooned restaurant, where we all congregated before our nights' activities and where we'd end up afterwards. 

We toured around Ville St. Laurent, met up with our son and strolled along Prince Arthur to Carre St. Louis (The Plateau) and mini-climbed Mount Royal.  And then there was lower Montreal - St. Antoine St., which housed music stores and pawn shops in buildings so crooked and dilapidated, I wondered how they remained standing. 

Montreal is a city of millions of apartment dwellers, each person banking their own memories.  Now the trees outside my unit have a new significance.  They have a sense of the flowing romantic ambiance of Montreal.

Busy As A

for the next week.  

I will update my subsidy situation when I hear from the co-op.

Under Review

I sent an email to the office on May 8th notifying them that our subsidy calculation was incorrect - that the co-op had cherry-picked the amount of our income (see post dated May 4th).  I received an email back from our Property Manager denying that the numbers had been cherry-picked.  A second email from the Property Manager stated that I had not handed in a copy of my 2010 Income Tax Assessment - only my husband's and that was the reason why his income was taken from his 2010 Income Tax Assessment and my 2012 income was taken from my covering letter.

I certainly did hand in my 2010 Income Tax Assessment.  Isn't it strange, that the co-op decided to use my husband's 2010 Income Tax Assessment, even though I had also included my husband's 2012 income in my covering letter?

The Property Manager also stated in her email that if a member's income changes throughout the year, it is the responsibility of the member to inform the co-op to adjust their subsidy.  I have been doing just that since 2010 - to no avail.

We have electronically submitted our 2011 Income Tax Assessments and await a response from the co-op's bookkeeper.

Molly & Henri

Subsidy Smorgasbord

Subsidies in our co-op have not been calculated since 2010, even though we submitted multiple applications.  In March of this year we were asked to include a copy of our 2010 Income Tax Assessment.  Because our income has substantially changed between 2010 and 2012, I included a breakdown of our present income in my covering letter.  

The co-op provided us with a synopsis of how they determined what our housing charges will be effective July 1, 2012.  They used my husband's income from his 2010 Income Tax Assessment, instead of his actual income in 2012, because it was higher.  Then the co-op cherry-picked my income by using the figure I had quoted in my covering letter and ignoring the figure in my 2010 Income Tax Assessment.  Why?  Because it was higher.  This resulted in our so-called 'present-day income' being $300. more than it actually is and our housing charge being $100. higher than it should be.

We are in receipt of our 2011 Income Tax Assessment, which again creates a discrepancy as to what our monthly income was then and what it is now.  However, that amount is miniscule.  

A 2012 housing charge subsidy cannot be based on a 2010 Income Tax Assessment, and worse, it is evident that the co-op purposefully cherry-picked the numbers used in the calculation of our subsidy, to their advantage.
 

The Debt

Several months ago I received a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency informing me that they had done an assessment of my 2010 income tax return and demanded that I reimburse them $1,000.  The error was steeped in the fact that I had claimed $20,000.+ for rent.  It took me no time at all to realize how the mistake had been made.  Each time I had opened up my electronic tax file, the ON-BEN form, which I had previously filled out, was nowhere to be found; so I'd fill out another form.  This happened three times and came up to the exact amount that I had overly claimed on my income tax form.  I explained this to Revenue Canada several times.  I even wrote them a letter exclaiming how could I possibly have paid over $20,000. in rent in light of the fact that our entire yearly income was a little over that amount?  Common sense did not prevail!

In desperation I tried one more time to explain the situation to a CRA employee over the phone.  He suggested that I forward a copy of our lease to them.  I explained that we have no lease; that I live in a co-op, that it was near bankruptcy, that the Office Co-ordinator had been fired; that the maintenance man was no more, that the co-op was falling apart and that the place was really crooked.  He sighed, and with a certain sense of compassion in his voice, asked:  'Do, you live in Toronto?'  'No', I said rather adamantly;  'I live in Ottawa'.  'OH', he replied, 'TORONTO is r-e-a-l-l-y bad'. 

Well, to sum up my misadventure here in Our Town, I asked our office administrator for a letter confirming how much we had paid in housing charges.  Alas, the bookkeeper made a mistaken entry for one of the previous 12 months; fortunately, the office had a photocopy of our cheque. Things soon got cleared up with the Canada Revenue Agency - our indebtedness to them was quickly reduced to approximately $300., which amount I happily forfeited.

Now that I have a little more time on my hands, I've been wondering how the members in Toronto co-ops are doing.