| Customs and Excise guards seek improved retirement and pension
Custom and Excise Extra Guards staged a protest yesterday outside Riverside Plaza, Port-of-Spain for better retirement and pension packages. Armed with red flags and placards, the small group of men circled the car park while screaming at the top of their lungs for justice and a better 20-20 vision.
Speaking to the media, the president of the Custom and Excise Extra Guard Association, Andre Cabarr, explained that the current retirement package was very inadequate.
He explained that if a person worked a total of 33 years he stood to receive $38, 750.40. That, he added, was not right for anyone . After we put in so many years to just receive that amount and then get no pension in the end, Cabarr lamented, is total nonsense. What sort of 20-20 vision is that, he enquired..
Taxpayers' deadline looms
"Now, this is the part you need to send to the IRS," H&R Block's tax associate Sharon Fox (right) tells Nicole and Robert Pisaniello of Myrtle Beach at the end of their tax preparation session Sunday. Though the deadline was extended this year, many stragglers are still completing their returns. .
Another step towards freedom
The contrast was striking. Last week, on the one hand, the trustees of the EPFO (Employees Provident Fund Organisation) went through the motions of one more meeting and, yet again, failed to decide the interest rate to pay its EPF subscribers for 2006-07 yes, the year that got over a fortnight ago. On the other, the alternative pensions framework coming up under the aegis of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) continued its slow, yet stubborn, march towards offering Indians greater control and probably, a greater retirement fund over their financial future. .
A TAXING DAY
If my personal checkbook had an audible voice, on Friday the 13th of April you would have discerned an anguished groan. My wife had called to tell me how big a check to write to our home remodeling contractor to pay for some mid-course additions to the original plan. Yes, "cost overruns" are a fact of life with even the best laid plans! My faithful assistant had picked up my tax return from our CPA and I was in the process of writing sizeable checks to the IRS and the great state of Georgia. Then a little voice, that haloed phantasm that resides in the recesses of our brain, said, "Okay, Walker, quit complaining. You are blessed to have a nice house to remodel in a world where billions of people live in shacks! And stop whining about paying taxes! The reason you owe taxes is the fact that 2006 was a good year.
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