The latest tax grab, courtesy of IMC

Thursday evening spin class I met Jen! Both of us are nursing knee issues so we managed to chat a bit in between Katie exhorting us to greater and greater efforts. We got a bit more exhortation than usual since Katie wasn't on her bike. Instead, we got a bit of a dance number to the various songs. Lots of fun.

I took it a bit easy, wondering what my knee would think of the whole thing. Mostly that meant keeping the rpm below 110, but I burped up to 120 by accident a few times, for a really short time period. Really backed off the power. The knee felt fine throughout. 1.5 hrs total.

The swim this morning was a bit of a zoo at Canyon Meadows. My buddy M was swimming backstroke, which is new. Turns out she has an owie in her shoulder that doesn't like front crawl. She can swim backstroke faster than front crawl. Odd. Swam an hour, with the regular mix of stuff. The high point was 93 seconds for 100 m, and not working hard. I had great water feel for that one, and the one following at 97 seconds (blew a flip turn). During the third that water feel abruptly went away and I was suddenly a feeble reed in the water. That one was much slower. Did one more and it was about the same, 104 seconds. These were all on 2 minutes. I loved that first one though; I could feel propulsion right from the first instant of the catch, and my arms felt strong and stable in the water. I took an extra minute to regroup and did one more, pushing hard, trying for good form. I didn't quite have the feel again, but it was still 93 seconds, so I'm pretty pleased with that.

Leg exercises, but wasn't in the mood for core. Instead I shoveled the hard packed snow from the bottom of the driveway. The top is sloppy, but the bottom is icy snow, especially where there are tire tracks.

One of my buddies just got a letter from Ironman Canada Triathlon with a nasty surprise. Here it is:


Dear Subaru Ironman Canada Entrant,

As many of you may be aware, effective July 1, 2010 British Columbia moved to a harmonized provincial and federal sales tax at a combined rate of 12%. This has been a controversial and confusing tax change but it is the law and therefore must be collected on all sale of goods and services. Unfortunately when your entry to the 2011 Subaru Ironman Canada was processed through Active, HST was not collected on the entry fee. This has recently been brought to our attention and we are obligated to collect that tax.

To that end, the credit card that you used to enter the race will be charged $69, the amount of the HST on the entry fee. We will begin processing the charges on Monday, November 29th and these will be complete by December 10th. Should you wish to have this charge applied to a different credit card or if the one you used to enter has expired, please contact our athlete services center at admin@nasports.com or 877-377-2373. We apologize for this error and any inconvenience it may cause.

Ironman Canada Triathlon


I have a huge problem with this, even though my copy hasn't come yet. I see the following issues. Am I out to lunch? Any input from anyone with accounting or tax expertise?

1- We paid in full in advance. Just because the service was delivered after July 2010 shouldn't matter.

2- We already paid GST. If they are charging us HST, they should have subtracted off the GST that we've already paid. Other wise we're paying the federal portion twice.

3- The exchange rate has changed. In Aug 2009 one Canadian dollar bought about .9028 US dollars, July 2010 it would buy about .98 US dollars. Should they not take the difference in exchange rate into account?

Followup a couple hours later. I just realized they are talking about people registered for 2011 IMC, not those who signed up for 2010. But still, arguments 1 and 2 still apply.