THE ONLY SURE THING IS DEATH AND TAXES--NOT ANY MORE!

More of the same this week.  Lots of work at the office.  People are getting outside more and traffic is picking up as they are feeling more confident now that we are at level 3 in the Covid 19 restrictions.  I see a lot more joggers, walkers and bike riders as people are looking for any excuse to get outdoors.  As my jogging becomes more regular I’m finding that it is becoming much easier for me to do and my stamina is increasing.  I’m even toning up a little more as I’m trying to not take as many seconds at dinner time.

On Saturday morning I got up early and went on a 5 mile bike ride through Milford and around Pupuke lake.  Then Alisa and I drove over some dirt roads to Waitakere Ranges Regional Park and Whatipu.  We explored the caves there and the black sand beach.  We also visited Huia and Don McClean lookout points where we saw some beautiful vistas of the ocean and nearby islets/motus.  We arrived back home around 3 p.m.  For an early Mother’s Day gift I treated us to take out dinner from Steamheads restaurant, some pasta dishes.  Today for Mother’s Day dinner I found a recipe called Herbed French Toast with Smoked Salmon and Crème Fraich  which I’m going to try.

In the evenings this week Alisa and I worked on putting together a power point FHE presentation for tomorrow night.  I will be doing the lesson entitled “Using our Talents and Gifts, and Second Chances!”, then Mom will be playing a get to know you game and Scattergories! which we will do with our Seniors group over Zoom.

The real big news this week was that the Appellate Dept. of NZ finally issued on Wednesday its ruling on my ward missionary fund tax case, which I was in Wellington on on March 17.  The 3 judge panel unanimously reversed the Feb. 2019 High Court ruling, now ruling that all monies donated to the Church’s missionary fund by anyone qualify for a 33% tax credit!  The NZ version of the IRS has disallowed all such credits since 2015.  The High Court ruling was handed down before I arrived in the mission field, and held that missionary fund donations by the missionary, parents and grandparents were not subject to the credit because the missionary received a benefit (the mission experience) and thus it wasn’t a true gift.  The High Court also strangely ruled that siblings, aunts and uncles, and anyone else could claim the tax benefit, in essence splitting the baby.  The Appellate Dept. ruled that there was no direct benefit to the payor, regardless of who that was, and thus that it was a gift and qualified.  This is especially good news in that Church members in NZ can now go back to 2015 and claim the credit for each year that they donated to the missionary fund, and good news is a little scarce to come by since Covid 19.  The Commissioner now has 20 days to appeal, which I think she might not do since the Crown’s counsel got beat up by the judges at the March hearing.  We’ll let the general Church population here in NZ know about the ruling once we find out if there will be another appeal.  I’ve shepherded the appeal through local counsel since I got here.  As best I can tell, this may be the reason I was called to NZ on this mission!