As you all know, I'm on maternity leave from my teaching job, and I will not be returning in the fall. I'm receiving EI from the government for being on leave at the moment, and it's going to help us pay the bills next year and beyond, when I no longer have money coming in consistently. I posted recently about initiatives I've taken to bring in more money, like tutoring and doing the odd bit of secretarial work. Apparently, this complicates my EI benefits more than anyone could possibly imagine.
I figured, well, since I'm tracking how much I make from these little jobs, and since I'm going to be claiming it on my income taxes for 2010, I'd better let the EI people know about it. One phone call let to completing an online report (required on the weekend, I might add), which then prompted me to call a 1-800 number to speak to a representative (during regular business hours, thank you very much), who directed me to print and fill out a form to mail to my nearest processing centre. The reason for all this? My tutoring is self-employment. Do I have equipment and premises? What are they worth? Is this my primary source of income? Would I work at this full-time if possible? Why not? And on and on for two pages.
The upshot of all this: my payments are suspended until a decision can be reached on whether or not I still deserve to get 350$ a week from the government, now that I'm rolling in 50-90$ a week from tutoring. Sheesh. It's meant to take about 21 days. Darn good thing I'm not relying on this money to pay bills NOW or anything! I could very easily have accepted the cash I was paid, not notified the government, not claimed it on my taxes, and in all likelihood, they would never know. But I would know. And so would the little person watching my every move, whom this money is going to support. Lesson learned: being honest pleases God, not men. Fortunately, my motivation to be honest comes from the former.
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