Here Is An Example of Tax Refund Scam Text

Income Tax Return Scam

Hard-working Canadians are now rushing to file their tax returns. Also, scammers are working hard to scam more people and extract more money in unique ways. A common form of scam this time of year takes the form of a phone, text, or email scam asking people to pay owed taxes or collect a tax refund.

Today I have the opportunity to present a screenshot of a real scam text that was received via phone. Scammers send this type of text or email asking to collect or pay money to the CRA or tax agency. These texts or emails look so real that some people actually fall for it and lose money. Basically, if you follow the instructions on these texts or emails your banking information will be exposed to the con artists and they will be able to empty out your bank accounts.

Government tax agencies like CRA or others do not send texts, emails, or call asking for money. Their method of communication is postal mail or notifying your accountants (if you chose that option). The other ways you can check your tax balances is by logging onto the government tax website or calling the tax agencies directly.

Vigilance and common sense are your best defence. If you believe you have been a victim of a scam, contact your local police authority or central anti-fraud authority such as The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC).

What is an Entrepreneur?

Different Types Of Entrepreneur

The job of an entrepreneur is to make money. It is that pure and simple. However, as you may be noticing in the midst of the stretched financial times under which we are living, it is not actually simple to make money in this day and age unless you are acutely aware of where an opportunity exists, how to create an opportunity, or possessed of a quick brain. Money does not grow on trees, as the saying goes, and there is just no way that you can guarantee the success of a money-making plan. If there was a foolproof way to lay down a small amount of cash and walk away with a larger amount, we’d all be doing it.

Prior knowledge of a market definitely helps. It allows a potential entrepreneur to recognize where there is a gap in a market. Without this ability, there is often a danger of trying to make money in a saturated market, where there is a queue of people pushing and shoving to make their mark. Being the best in that particular market may deliver the results you were looking for, but then again it may not. And being in the middle of the pack will lead to, at best, disappointing results.

Some entrepreneurs style themselves as being in the “ideas market”. In other words, they have creativity that allows them to formulate solutions to existing or potential problems, or ideas for a product that will become highly-prized as a consumer item. This seems to be an innate skill. There is no apparent way of teaching creativity – it is instinctive and natural. You can be taught to recognize opportunity, but creating an opportunity is something that is the preserve of a lucky few, percentage-wise.

Both of the above are kinds of entrepreneur, albeit different types. The first type is an opportunist. In the current market, only a very skilled opportunist can be confident of riding out the storm, as a contraction in a market dictates that the level of opportunity will be reduced, competition between candidateswill be greater, and the people who are quicker to spot the opportunities will be the ones who hit the jackpot. Competing with such individuals is a thankless task for anyone. But they are good at what they do and should be congratulated.

The second kind is an innovator. The opportunities for an innovator to strike it rich are likely to depend on what area of innovation they specialize in. Although there is no recession-proof market (while supply-and-demand markets fare worse than necessities, there is some sign that people will still seek to make savings on the latter), someone who dreams up a solution to a need will be on safer ground than someone who conceptualizes and produces an item that is coveted a great deal, but judged to be beyond the spending power of too many people. So in the present day, it may well be that the best thing to be is a problem-solver.:

First Published: Apr 18, 2009 EntrepreneurJourney.com

How Long It Takes to Double Your Money?

Double Your Money

Have you ever looked at your savings account statements and wondered how long would it take to double your money at interest rates mentioned on those statements? By using a simple formula, you will be able to figure it out very fast.

This simple formula is called The Rule of 72. The rule works when your interest rate is compounded annually and you are not taking out any money or interests from your account. To find out how long it will take to double your money, take your interest rate and divide 72by your interest rate. Yes, 72is the magic number here. Let's say your high interest savings account is paying you 3% interest, divide 72 by 3 and it comes to 24 years. If you add more money every month to your capital, your money will double in lesser years. If you have a mutual fund which returns roughly 10% annually, your money will double in 7.2 years. Don't be discouraged by these long years. Investment is a discipline and you should not expect miracles to happen overnight.

First Published: Apr 17, 2007 ADawnJournal.com

Canada’s Cheapest Cell Phone Plans

Freedom Mobile Still Offers Best Plans

When searching for the cheapest mobile plans in Canada, you may get confused with all the players available to choose from. However, most of the value plan providers have been bought by big 3 brothers who have been terrorizing and manipulating the Canadian market since the invention of the cell phone. For example, Mobilicity was gobbled up and then destroyed by Rogers, Public Mobile was eaten by Telus and became ungenerous with their plans, and there is Bell Mobility hiding itself under Virgin Mobile.

To keep things simple, I will take Freedom Mobile as my base plans and will try to find lower plans that beat my base plans.

Freedom Mobile Plans

$25 per Month (No Data)

This plan offers unlimited Canada calling and unlimited Canada/US texts.

$35 per Month

Same as $25 plan + 2 GB data

Chatr Mobile Plans

This is Rogers. It offers a $20 per month plan, but it’s only unlimited local. You will be paying extra for sending texts, retrieving voice mail, etc. This is not an option for most users. The $25 plan offers unlimited province only and 100 global texts out. If you want data, you will have to add $10 for 500 MB or $15 for 1 GB. So it’s way more expensive than Freedom.

Fido Plans

This is Rogers as well. Their $25 plan gives only local 100 weekday minutes and unlimited weekend + evening minutes, and unlimited global texts. If you want data, 500 MB is $40 and 1 GM is $50.

Public Mobile Plans

If you use their create-a-plan tool and create a 30-day plan with only province- wide talk and no text no data, it comes to $27 per month. Add text and 1 GB data, it comes to $42. So it’s even worse than Chartr. Mobilicity used to offer plans that are similar to Freedom Mobile and in some cases even cheaper, but Telus destroyed it all since they took over.

Koodo Plans

This is also Telus. Their $28 plan comes with 100 minutes and unlimited texts. 500 MB and 1 GM data cost $40 and $50 per month.

Virgin Mobile Plans

This is Bell. $39 plan provides only Canada 100 minutes + Unlimited E+W and Unlimited Global text. 00 MB and 1 GM data cost $40 and $50 per month.

So from these plans it’s clear that although Shaw Communications bought Freedom Mobile, which used to be called Wind Mobile, its plans are still not destroyed and intact. As Shaw started upgrading their network to provide better and improved coverage and services, let’s wait and see if the plans remain as good as they are now and or if Shaw destroys them like the others.

Keeping Business in the family

Running A Business With Family Members

The word “entrepreneur” conjures up in many people’s minds an image of an individual who makes money for themselves with little concern for anyone, nor anything beyond their own bottom line. This is as unfair as saying that the only reason anyone takes on a job is doing so for selfish reasons. The truth is that entrepreneurship is a way of making a living just as surely as digging a ditch or manning the phones in an office. And entrepreneurship is not all about looking out for Number One, either. With a bit of co-ordination and collaboration, close family ties can make for a strong business profile.

Just think of all the people who have gone into business as a partner in a company and have come unstuck later on when their business partner turned out either to be unscrupulous or incompetent. In such cases, unless you have everything in writing and a great deal of resourcefulness, you can lose everything. By going into business as a family, or part of a family, you can avoid this step naturally. Thinking about it logically, how hard do you think it would be to hide an unscrupulous nature from someone who you see all the time?

No-one knows you better than someone with whom you have grown up – and vice versa. You know their strengths, weaknesses and their instincts and they know yours. When dividing up duties in an organization, it can often be confusing and challenging to assign the correct duty to the correct person. The solution? Well, by knowing each other so well you can instinctively spot who will do which task best – removing the early teething troubles that come from figuring all of that out. And if there is a task that no-one is especially suited for, the close collaboration that has characterized your life as a family makes it easier to deal with it as a team.

All of this ties in fairly neatly with another major benefit to working together as a family – the profit margin. Self interest is a perfectly healthy motivating factor in trying to do the best that you can in business. It is all the more likely that you will keep your eye on the ball if that self interest is tied in with wanting to do the best for your family. Although nothing is a guaranteed success without planning, motivation and a great deal of good luck, the conditions that make success more likely are ones that are nurtured as a rule within families.

There is a line of thought that says you should not go into business with a family member because when things go wrong you will have all the more reason to be unhappy, and there can be an increase in tension. It is true that without sound business sense on the part of everyone, a business could well go downhill very quickly. For this reason, family businesses will not always work and it is not a perfect fit for everyone. Nothing is guaranteed. But by approaching the tasks and the tests that business will throw your way as a team, you give yourself a better chance of achieving them. Something which family ties will help enormously with.

First Published: Apr 24, 2009 EntrepreneurJourney.com