Many team leaders wonder if team members can be receipted for funds that they provide for their own usage for an STM trip? What are Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) regulations?
Yes, it is possible, if they meet some policy requirements … (IE. no bling) and if you check out this link you can see the document for yourself.
Mark Crocker
On Monday I was on the road for about 8 hours. that got us to and from a one-and-a-half hour meeting, the total distance we travelled was probably about 209 kilometres - 200 in actual distance, and about 9 in climbing in and out of potholes.
>Along the way, we passed some of the most beautiful country in the world, gentle mountains, lush and green, gave way to groves of banana, tea, pine and countless small farms. Most clung to the hillside, at times on a double black diamond slope, women, men and children advancing slowly with worn shovels and smoothed hoes.
The road was appropriately abominable, barely wide enough for us in parts, and deeply rutted with constantly eroding gullies. Our way forward was bound by other four-by-fours, large transport trucks with the appropriate African cliche of crowds seated on top to cover the mass of products, small Toyotas with the suspension about to burst, motorcycles of all kinds, and of course people. Thousands and tens of thousands of people.
Today was market day, so everyone was out in full force. The merchants and craftsmen carried their finished products along the long roads. A carpenter walked along with the carefully balanced wooden framework for the couch on his head.
African heads, protected by a twist of cloth, are used to carry almost anything you can imagine. They balance the large plastic water cans to and from home, children are often the ones sent running down to the well, to slowly and carefully picking their way home along the roadside, yellow jerry cans balanced high. For everyone else, the black plastic bag full of the days shopping, countless bundles of firewood, long long lengths of lumber and bamboo, an unopened umbrella ready for the rain, ruddy woven baskets, trays of tiny fish, each sway perfectly balanced, atop men and women as they walk the red dust. Even briefcases, suitcases and backpacks are commonly found on top rather than on the back of a pedestrian. In town, the budding entrepreneur places the metal pailful of coke and orange fanta bottles on his head, using the rhythmically ringing of the glass with a bit of stone or metal to advertise, although not quite the same as an ice-cream truck, it is as musical.
The number of objects that can be carried on your head is exponentially higher in Africa than home. In fact, after a lifetime, I can’t think of anything that we carry on our heads in Canada. I suppose earmuffs and toques do not really count as they are not something you are carrying but are rather wearing. Other than that, I think that leaves only headphones – the old-school kind, not the more prevalent ipod buds – that we might carry on our head. But, even here i hesitate, I think we would say we wear headphones rather than carry them, what do you think?
Mark Crocker
