An Industrial and Economic Profile of the Actor

They wanted to audit me.  They wanted receipts and a profile of my industry. Fortunately I was able to survive reading this letter without smelling salts because I had been prepping for an audit ever since the introduction of the GST (Goods and Services Tax – a value-added Canadian tax).

They wanted receipts? No problem. Profile of our industry? Hmmmm…. I called ACTRA, “Say RevCan wants an industrial profile for actors in Canada. Got one? Huh? Whaddyamean, no?” I called Fraternal, Equity, even the Canadian Conference of the Arts.  No profile existed.  So I wrote one: 

An Industrial and Economic Profile
of the Actor. 

The profile helped me to survive my audit.  It allowed me to deduct a much broader and deeper field of expenses – all thanks to thinking about the GST.  Pre-GST, I wrote off 15%-ish of my expenses and only a small proportion of my expense categories, post-GST: 100% right across the board – thanks Revenue Canada, because filling out the GST forms made me think about what I was selling.