Mostly: Classical

[Sexton O Blake]

amarksp - my comment on your GIM post.

Nothing to do with "GIM" but with the "dividend".

If you don't know already, as Canucks we do not benefit from preferential treatment of dividends as you would (your equivalent treatment would be no different if you owned CDN stocks outside your registered accounts).

Within our registered accounts (tax exempt - retirement etc)
- we get the dividend (as income) (I believe it is the full amount; converted to Canuck bucks)
- non-issue

Outside our retirement account
- we get the dividend - but it is treated as "interest" income - fully taxed (not good; converted back to Canuck bucks - double not good)
- we are debited a withholding tax (not sure of the calculation)

Personally the US dividend outsite the RSP is a pain in the ass and for me has been an administrative burden esp when I hold the same stock across two accounts.. akin to Jerry Seinfeld signing those royalty checks from Japan..

Anyways, the allure isn't so alluring (at least to me) because it pays a dividend. I would be more apt to put something like that in my RSP and forget about the paperwork - however for some, with the foreign content limit of 30%, they may pick and choose more wisely than otherwise not.

I will review your GIM further. I agree that the dividend can be a good "pay me while I wait" strategy. When I held Pfizer I received an $11 dividend. I had a few hundred of Ford and I sold it (I had too much of a gain so I blew it all on RBAK) - then a few weeks later I got a $30 dividend. Nice - paid for The Commish to sell.

(If you knew all this thats ok.. I am sure there are others that read this and never knew a buddy of mine got a DIVIDEND of about $1800US from the Palm Spin off.. he actually treated it like a Canadian Dividend. Totally wrong of course. His treatment should have been as interest (as I said).

But the joke was the fact he should have never declared it in the first place since the Canuck Feds changed the rules - and basically it represented the Cost Base of the Palm shares after the spin-off - which only would be dealt with when it was sold. Yeah he is a DUH alright.

I definitely have to improve on my trading skills, technically bad habits, but at least I try to learn and understand things as I go along. This past year I learned how to not only handle ROC (return of Capital from the trusts) but to code that in my program which auto-calcs the numbers for me.

I honestly laugh when I hear people paying someone to do their "basic" income tax forms. If they only knew how truly easy they are).

Thanks amarksp..
B