4 - Questions

[Christopher Mallon]

Any questions that do not fit into another thread should go here.

[Christopher Mallon]

A bit unrelated, but since everyone is here anyway.

Here is the list of official OCA events:

Ontario Open - Victoria Day Holiday
Ontario Closed
OYCC - Late April/Early May
OHSCC - Mother's Day
Ontario team championships
Women's Championship
Senior's Championships

So I was wondering about the timing. If someone was going to run a closed, or a closed/women's championship, or a team championship, what kind of timing would they want? Assume it's for 2012. Summer is already pretty full not to mention short notice.

Thoughts?

[Rob Clark]

Thanks for getting the ball rolling Chris. The only thing I wasn't sure about with these dates was that the organizers might want to see what sort of OCA financial support they would receive for the events before committing to them.

[Brett Campbell]

Thanks for getting the ball rolling Chris. The only thing I wasn't sure about with these dates was that the organizers might want to see what sort of OCA financial support they would receive for the events before committing to them.

Thanks for laying out the calendar, Chris. Rob, we have to pay Bob G $500 out of our funds soon for the tax returns. If some organizer wanted to to a Seniors or Women's event, we have budgeted total $250 ($125 each) for that already. We could afford to immediately support a Ontario Closed event with $500, although organizers need to time to promote it. If we spend $1000 for Bob and the Ontario Closed this summer, we will have $76 until the next CFC rebate of about $2300 in November for the first 6 months from April to October 2012. Our support of the Olympic team members would have to wait until November. See my other comments in reply to Kevin Pacey in the budget section.

[Marcus Wilker]

At the AGM, there were questions about when our financial year began and ended. It seemed that practice and our guidelines had diverged. Have we sorted that out?

[Rob Clark]

Hi Marcus,

Thank you for bringing this up. We haven't, to be honest the current end year in terms of finances doesn't make sense to me. But this is something that needs to be addressed as it appears most of the supported events fall outside of our fiscal year. Truth be told I think this is how its always happened however there wasn't enough participation at the OCA level that these questions were asked. It makes sense to me to try to change our fiscal year. I know this has to be done through the government (and we would need to file taxes before that, which should happen soon) but does anyone know what sort of work such a changing would entail?

[Christopher Mallon]

The end that makes the most sense would be having the same as the CFC. However we are incorporated and the actual fiscal year end is different. A change may cost money...

[Brett Campbell]

The end that makes the most sense would be having the same as the CFC. However we are incorporated and the actual fiscal year end is different. A change may cost money...

Hi Chris and Rob

What you say, Chris, makes sense, to align the OCA with the CFC, and it's worked for some time. It's my understanding that the CFC year end is April 30th, and Bob G will use this year end for the OCA when he files the tax returns.

Rob, since I am a tax professional, I will explain tax year ends. Any corporation, non profit or not, can choose its year end, and often directors choose December 31st, to align with the calendar. I did that for myself with respect to my corporation. However, it would be unusual to choose a year end (like April 30th) for OCA for nine years from 2003 (or 2004, I forget) to the present, and then to request a year end change to December 31st for later years. I've never seen that done, and I've done a lot of corporate tax returns, so maybe it can't be. What people normally do is dissolve one corporation and start a new one with a new year end, in my experience.

As all of us can see, there will always be payables and receivables at year end no matter what, but this does not present any unusual difficulty in preparing income statements or balance sheets, as the ones I've done are clear enough to anyone.

[Rob Clark]

Hi Chris and Rob

What you say, Chris, makes sense, to align the OCA with the CFC, and it's worked for some time. It's my understanding that the CFC year end is April 30th, and Bob G will use this year end for the OCA when he files the tax returns.

Rob, since I am a tax professional, I will explain tax year ends. Any corporation, non profit or not, can choose its year end, and often directors choose December 31st, to align with the calendar. I did that for myself with respect to my corporation. However, it would be unusual to choose a year end (like April 30th) for OCA for nine years from 2003 (or 2004, I forget) to the present, and then to request a year end change to December 31st for later years. I've never seen that done, and I've done a lot of corporate tax returns, so maybe it can't be. What people normally do is dissolve one corporation and start a new one with a new year end, in my experience.

As all of us can see, there will always be payables and receivables at year end no matter what, but this does not present any unusual difficulty in preparing income statements or balance sheets, as the ones I've done are clear enough to anyone.

Thanks for the explanation Brett. When it comes to corporate taxes I could certainly stand to learn some.

[Christopher Mallon]

This is more something to consider going forward.

Compared to CFC membership rates, we are under-charging Juniors. We also have a serious lack of revenue.

We charge $7 for adults and $3 for juniors.

The CFC charges juniors at about 2/3 of the adult rate.

Increasing the junior rate by $2 would give us an extra $550 a year to play with - half going to the leagues, but it would be enough to improve the pitiful $125 we give to a couple of events to $250. It would also solve the disconnect between OCA and CFC Governor calculations, and would give each league a small amount of additional revenue to play with.

Also keep in mind that AFAIK it has been ages since the OCA raised membership rates, despite inflation. I'll have to dig out some old En Passent's to be sure of exactly when, but I know that it was already $7/$3 as of late 1998.

[Christopher Mallon]

No comment?

[Rob Clark]

Chris's idea certainly has merit and I believe the idea received support at the AGM. To be honest I'm against any price increase for chess memberships but I can certainly see his point. I'm interested to know what other people think.