Last meeting

Well, a big thank you to everyone for attending our last meeting. We had a record attendance. A big thank you to the ladies from SARS for the talk. I think everyone got something out of it.

In summary:

Basically everything you spend money on which is related to the challenge/disability of your child can be used as a tax deduction. You need a letter from you doctor to prove that your child has a special need. Then whatever you claim for you need to be able to prove that the reason you bought it is because of your child's special need. For example, if your child is 6 years old and needs to wear nappies or has to drink a certain type of formula then you can claim for it. There was some discussion around whether, for example, you could claim for yoghurt if that is all your child can eat most of the time and the consensus is that you could have a problem proving that this is related to the child's special need.

So the rule is to claim for everything(medical and other) but within reason and bear in mind that you may be called on to prove it. You must keep all slips relating to any claims for at least 5 years.

You can also go back for the last 2 years(could be 3) and claim for things which you did not know about then. You just need to contact SARS and ask if you can be reassessed for those years.

How deductions work: let's say you earn R100 000 in a year and pay R20 000 tax. Your medical/other expenses for your child amount to R20 000. So then your tax calculation will be based on R100 000 less R20 000 ie R80 000. So (if the tax rate is 20%) your new tax amount payable should be R16 000. Therefore you will get a tax refund of R4000.

If you have any queries please contat me and I will put you in contact with Lindsay at SARS.

The other topic at the meeting was our proposed fund-raising initiative. Myself, Louise and Maxine (possibly Deonette?) are thinking of climbing Kilimanjaro in order to raise funds. Lou and Maxine need to raise funds to send their kids to SNAP which is extremely expensive. I thought I would raise money for the group as a whole. There was some debate over how good a method this was of raising funds as a whole lot of money needs to be spent first as it is not cheap to climb Kili. What do you think? Should we rather look at other ways of raising the funds? Any ideas on how to go about it? We are hoping to get some publicity through maybe Carte Blanche and thereby get sponsorship from some large companies for the actual climb. Are we smoking our socks? Do you think it is doable?

In order to raise money for the group I need to get as much information as possible from everyone about their kids. I need pictures and stories and I need to know what you need and why. Bear in mind that this is a selling exercise. We have to make the people want to give us their money. Please send me as much as you can preferably soonish.

Walkers

An interesting post over at Better than normal about the different types of walkers.

Also found a blog that links to CP blogs.

Meeting July 2008

Ok, I've not been very good with updating. Sorry about that. Our next meeting is tonight(3/7/2008) at my place at 7:30 and I have a lady from SARS coming to talk to us about taxes and what we can claim for. We are also discussing a fundraising idea.