Accounting 101: Those Pesky ODSP Income, Mileage and Expense Reports for Business and Employment.

Louis Shalako

When filling out the Income and Expense Report form for the Ontario Disability Support Program, it is important to get all the information first. This report form is therefore filled out last.

It doesn’t matter whether you fill out the mileage form or the time sheets first. I do the mileage form(s), using rough notes that I collect day-by-day. My rough notes give mileage readings, where I worked, (perhaps from two or three different part-time gigs) and I also put down the number of hours. I have a clipboard. There is a pen and a few sheets of paper on it.

When I get in the car, I write down the date, the destination, and the mileage.

When I get to work, I write down the mileage, if I go somewhere on business, including Shared Services, I write down the before and after mileage.

The mileage forms are the most tedious and so I do them first. I do a few entries, checking them off on the rough notes as I go. I take little breaks because I hate paperwork. The whole thing might take an hour and a half on a bad day, i.e., I’ve been busy making too much money.

Then I go through and make up official time sheets. I check them off as I go.

The next thing to do is to gather all of your receipts and statements. Keep them all in the same place, and yet separate from your personal, household accounts. I write off the phone, the internet and other necessary business expenses. If I buy stamps, envelopes or computer equipment, I keep the receipt. In the case of my phone, the invoice actually comes to my email inbox and so I just print that out once a month. I print out my bank activity once a month.* If you have a business vehicle, keep all receipts for repairs, insurance, licenses and stickers. I do the math on a blank sheet and share that with the ODSP, who apparently aren’t very good at that sort of thing…

Add up all income. This is the figure that goes on the Income Report. Add up all mileage, multiply that by the rate of $0.40. This gives a figure in dollars. Enter the mileage and the dollar amount on the Income Report. Any slot on the form that is empty, I just put a stroke through it so they know that I saw it. (Nothing to report.)

Enter expenses in the appropriate slots on the Income Report. For example, there is a separate slot for banking charges. This is eligible, especially so as the ODSP may require you to have a separate account for business. Enter this amount, your monthly charges of $10.95 or whatever. Individual cases and circumstances may differ.

In my own case, I enter phone and internet, added together, on the appropriate line.

If you buy a printer, enter it under ‘equipment’, etc. If you take income and put it toward an investment into the business, it’s better to get approval, and enter this into ‘approved business investment’. (Assuming you bought a forklift or something.) This one appears to be for major investments into the business. A $700.00 computer probably doesn’t require approval assuming your old one blew up or something. It is, after all, essential to the business, in much the same way a radiator repair is essential to the business vehicle. I would never ask permission for that, as it is just plain bad policy.

On or about the seventh of the next month, I go to Shared Services downtown. I photocopy all sheets, statements and receipts.

I make two copies and give the ODSP the originals except the internet bill, the original I keep for myself. They want an original, pen and ink signature on the forms, which is just my interpretation. I don't really need that for my own purposes.

I keep one copy for my own records, and also provide a copy to my major employer and business mentor for their own records and tax-reporting. This gives me backup hard-copies in the case of fire, loss or destruction—and I don’t have to ask the ODSP for it.

Generally, it is more favourable to claim mileage as opposed to keeping fuel receipts.

This allows you to offset income which would otherwise be clawed back at the rate of $0.50/dollar once you get over their punitive, $200.00/month allowable income limit/barrier.

Just as an example, Party A spent roughly $10.00/day to put gas in the car in a recent month. That’s $300.00 in fuel expense for the business. Yet the mileage worked out to $541.00. This results in $231.00 in offset income. The client gets to keep that.

And why not?

You earned it, after all.

END

*My book royalties are shown on the printout of my bank account, which I report separately. 

Interestingly, the ODSP adds it all together after a year and scratches their collective heads, trying to figure out how to ding me for an overpayment. So far, I just haven't made that kind of money, although in the past, (2003), I have been forced to write them a cheque from my business account.

Thank you for reading.

What Do I Do Next?

Photo by Louis, a work in progress.

Louis Shalako

I'm coming to the end of my current little landscaping job. It's a lot like coming to the end of a good book, whether reading it or writing it.

What will I do next?

There is that strange attachment to a work in progress, which challenged me physically and psychologically, as well as paying a little money. The money keeps me going day-by-day, and at least while working we don't have to confront larger issues...I worked no more than two or three hours a day, two or three days at a stretch except for the most recent, where I went back five days in a row.

That's my big question. Who else in this town would hire me on such a basis, paying a decent rate and supplying tools and materials...???

That is one very good question. The other question is how much the ODSP will dock next month's pension cheque, and what kind of a position does that leave me in regarding rent, insurance, internet/phone bills, and other fixed costs of subsistence.

 So. What in the hell do I do next?

Hopefully it will be something.

Here are some previous stories.

http://bringerofrain.blogspot.ca/2016/06/back-to-work.html 

 http://bringerofrain.blogspot.ca/2016/06/lets-hope-this-dont-kill-me.html

Burnout.

 

Sitting at that desk all day long.

Louis Shalako

Lately there’s this sense of boredom, a bit of depression and what sure seems like burnout.

I’ve worked pretty hard over the last six years, since publishing my first two novels. Now I have five pen-names, twenty novels and something like a hundred thirty-five ebook titles, with another slew of titles available in paperback.

At some point I just quit blogging for five pen names in rotation. In order to write a bunch of novels, the short stories and submissions sort of fell by the wayside. Every morning, I get up and check the emails. I check the sales account numbers. Then I go on a bunch of websites and read, sometimes for an hour and a half, sometimes two or more hours. I call it ‘the morning repost,’ and I post those stories as many places as I can in order for other people to get the benefit of them.

In the last six years, I worked pretty hard to educate myself as a writer, to build up a platform and to learn at least the basics of everything a person can learn in order to write and publish their own works.

Since January 2015, I wrote six novels of over 60,000 words each. That alone was a ton of work.

It’s difficult to take a day off once you get bitten by the bug, and yet, inevitably, I seem to be slacking off. Finding ideas is not that easy, and lately I haven’t been working at it. I have couple of blank files on the desktop and I haven’t even really thought about them. Publishing # 99 Easy Street as a serial sort of gives me a little something to do, a nice easy job that doesn’t take up too much time.

I have chores left undone, including taxes, price changes, edit and format Easy St., make a cover, all kinds of things really, and it’s like I just don’t care.

Bear in mind, it’s been a long winter if not a particularly harsh one. I’m lucky to get out of here for an hour or two a day. Three or four hours away from the house would be a real good day for me.

I am at this desk pretty much all day, every day, and this has been going on for some time.

At some point, I need to do something different once in a while. This is just what we can’t afford to do after twenty-three years on a very small pension, and after all this time, book sales are not all that impressive.

As somebody once said, if you can quit, then do it—

The trouble is, that if I just gave up on writing, there wouldn’t be much left, and I’d be even more bored than I am now.

END

Zen, Living the Dream

Zen. Living the Dream.

Louis Shalako

I ran into an old friend on the beach. I laughed when I saw him. 

That’s a kind of joy, ladies and gentlemen.

He was telling me about some work.

He was saying we could get eighteen bucks an hour. He was asking me about drywall, and framing, and partitions, and interior renovations. Something about a building or a few buildings downriver. He doesn’t have that much experience himself.

I told him all about piecework. The boss is offering so much per square foot of board, so much per linear foot of framing, so much for this and so much for that. You’re a subcontractor and you’re either making all your own contributions or you’re kind of an outlaw in this day and age. Yeah, and if you really hustle, and if you know what you’re doing, you can make a pretty good buck for someone with no real skills and no real education.

(One. I have skills. Two. I have an education. Three, I don’t want the fucking job. – ed.)

I don’t want the job. I don’t want the job for eighteen bucks an hour. I don’t want the job for twenty-five bucks an hour, and I don’t want the job for fifty bucks an hour. Yeah, I don’t want to get a crew together, I don’t want to buy a pickup truck and buy a bunch of tools and get up at the crack of dawn every stinking day (which to be fair I do anyways) and round up a crew and try and get them onto a jobsite without loaning or advancing them money so they can get through until payday and by the way we need to sit around in a coffee shop parking lot for half an hour while we’re at it. (Three or four times a day.)

KeepOnTruckin', (Wiki.)

I told him a little bit about ceilings, about hanging twelve-foot sheets of five-eighth drywall while standing on a scaffold and praying your partner will get a couple of screws in there before you die and your arms fall off and it kills the both of you, and him a married man and everything.

I told him I had seventeen novels. I told him I just got thirty bucks from Google Play. He agreed that was pretty smart, like that James Grisham guy, and I didn’t correct him on the details. He told me I need to send one of my books to James Grisham and they’ll tweak it a bit and then I’m on my way. I know what he’s saying, but I didn’t correct him on the details.

I gave him the same advice I would give any young (middle-aged unemployed guy) today.

Don’t do nothing to jeopardize that pogy claim, that welfare cheque, that annuity from the insurance company because you were in a bad car accident fourteen years ago and have some severe head injuries.

(Don’t fuck up that disability pension, in other words. – ed.)

Because in today’s marketplace, you really can’t afford to succeed. For the first time in thirty years, all of a sudden you’re buying your own eyeglasses, paying for your own rotten teeth to be pulled, and paying for your own scrip for your own narcotic pain pills, also one or two members of the diazepide family of mood-disorder inducing dopes, and whatever. You know what I’m saying.

Basically, I figure I’m living the dream. I have achieved every fucking goal I ever had, chief among which was not to work for a living. That’s why I’m not a greeter at Walmart.

I am officially retired from the world of working for some capitalistic bastard. Now I’m the capitalistic bastard—and I like it.

I like it just fine, ladies and gentlemen. In fact, I’ve been so successful at being a lazy cunt that I am now in a position to give something back to my community.

See my Billion Dollar Giveaway.

Krusty Mickdermid, Walmart greeter, (stolen photo.)

Why in the fuck would I go to work, for thirty-five hours a week at minimum wage? Hey, I appreciate the cheap prices, Walmart. But, uh, I won’t even do that for cash under the table for fuck’s sakes. You work a hundred and forty hours a month, for what? Fifty bucks a month more than I make now, and you get to pay all your own prescriptions, eyeglasses, and you’re too fucking scared to line up at the food bank. You’re standing around in a stupid shirt. You’d be surprised by how many people tell me they make too much money to go the food bank, and the fact is its bullshit. You just told me how much you make—and this is just my opinion, but you really should make a point of going there once in a while. Who in the fuck told you that you make too much money?

‘Cause my journalistic instincts are aroused. I could really make something of a story like that…

The fact is, we’re living the dream.

We won’t give that up too easily.

We’re going to sit around on beaches, write stuff, and be ourselves.

The world doesn’t have to like it or even accept it.

That’s just the way it’s going to be.

End